Let me know when there's a star developer who's name on the front of a video game cover will guarantee a moderate number of sales no matter how bad the game is. That's when the comparison against the top 0.1% of actors will make sense.
I seriously doubt most game developers make anywhere near that.
There are exceptions but I saw my salary double when I left the industry and from talking with other people it seemed like a pretty common pattern.
FWIW games follows the 90/10 rule(90% of revenue goes to 10% of the market) so while the 100k average may be "accurate" it doesn't paint a clear picture.
I mean it's still a lot more than the zero that most musicians and actors make, but an extremely surprising amount nonetheless.
The real twist on this is that these aren't stable jobs either. Every studio I know had some sort of closure/downsizing around the 3-5 year mark. I know many people who had to be constantly moving between SEA/SF/Austin/etc just to keep a job across a career.
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I know they are a joke in the gaming world, but at least they pay people what they are worth.
As does Valve.
as an example Sony has 10-15 divisions. TVs, batteries, Lcd screens, cameras, etc. For the last 10 to 15 yrs all of them have lost money except the game division but the game division has the lowest salaries.
...until he finally oversold his overselling, that is.