My perspective is limited to where I've worked. But I kind of wonder if the "no take, only throw" approach where game companies are complaining they can't hire anyone--but refuse to hire juniors--is less because hiring juniors is risky and more because they expect The Right Candidate to fix their shit for them.
I recall many times a problem was very clearly not enough workers to do the work, and 3x my salary would get spent on bringing in new senior talent who was either a nightmare or left in frustration when they realized they were expected to solve problems that existed at a corporate level.
"Yes, we could hire five people who are new to the gaming industry or looking for work, but if we hold out for the Great Wizard Scrundle Bingos, they can use their magic wand to basically launch this project on their o-- Oh, it's canceled because attrition meant we couldn't make vertical slice."
the number of potential internal candidates who have already spent their free time honing new skill sets in hopes of someday moving into dev or something.
This actually seems to happen even less and is a primary contributor to my hypothesis, which includes the belief that the working employees you have are never as good as the magic unicorn you don't have.
