The more I look into Gamedev the more it looks like a very ungrateful and daunting task
You can put all your energy (and money) into a game and it might just... flop
With a startup you can always try to pivot, or make something of what was developed. And your costs with creative productions (which are harder to reuse) are much smaller.
You can do this in gamedev as well.
A high budget example would be Fortnite which pivoted to a Battle Royale version of the original, vastly less successful, game. A lower budget example would be Proteus, originally a failed attempt to write an RPG that pivoted into something quite different.
Discord is an example of a game company pivoting from a failed MOBA to a more traditional tech company.