I'm probably missing some back story here. Why did the developers agree to work for such low salaries? If they accepted the job knowing how much they will be paid, why are they upset about it now?
Many of the other comments seem to be accusing the employer of acting in bad faith, or of immoral behavior. If the employees knew exactly what they were getting into, these accusations seem baseless.
Regarding immoral behavior on the part of the employer: I still don't buy that either. Someone can be a bad employer (ie, one that i would never want to work for), and still be perfectly morally upstanding. If someone, in a competitive labor marketplace, takes on a job which has low pay, I don't think they can accuse their employer of immoral behavior because of low pay. Such accusations should be saved for those scums that pull a bait-and-switch and refuse to honor their promises.
Squad is taking advantage of its developers. There's no other way to put it. It's over-working them with massive crunch times (that may not have been communicated clearly to job seekers up front) and paying them a very tiny fraction of what they could be earning elsewhere. Who knows how much of that is related to false promises. A lot of scummy employers will say things like "The pay will go up after an introductory period", or "We'll give you a raise soon", and then it never happens. Maybe it happened here. We don't know until we listen to the employees' stories. That's why my first instinct is not to look for reasons why it's their fault.
And working conditions are not an accident.
It's no different from people choosing a career in early childhood education. Some people insist on doing what they love, ignoring ugly financial issues caused by supply and demand.
People take very stupid decisions when they are desperate.
- Working on games is their dream job. They want to do it so much they'd do it for free.
- Long-term unemployment makes one desperate. I have personal experience with this: I once took a job that offered no benefits and low pay because I had been unemployed for two years and was desperate for a job.
- For the same reasons people don't get out of abusive relationships ASAP. They come to believe they deserve the abuse. Again, personal experience: working at a company with low pay and abusive management convinced me I wasn't cut out for anything better, and it was a long time before I broke free of that mental trap and eventually sought employment elsewhere.
- They think that the low pay is temporary and that it'll go up when the product takes off. And then the employer keeps delaying the salary increases by moving the goalposts. Hey, another trap I've fallen into... (and yes, all of my personal experience comes from the same company)