If you don't like it, refuse to do it, and maybe they'll fire you. Or, if you're OK with it, then do it. I don't really see where the exploitation comes in.

Except everyone who going for a job in games industry knows about it. It's not like people going for those 40 hours and unknowingly getting into modern slavery in a basement with their documents taken away.

There just too many people who want to make games and budgets are limited while competition is high. There is very few companies that are highly profitable, but majority of people wouldn't want to work for them.

Is it still shitty offer? Yes, but it's people's choice to work there.

Not really - if you are salaried worker - you get paid even if the project that you are working on fails. You trade potential profit for stability. But if you are a founder/investor who works on your own stuff then you will lose your own money if the project fails.

Do you mean because the company values my labor more than they pay me, that's exploitation?

How about when I buy eggs from the grocery and value them more than they cost me, so that there is consumer surplus. Is that exploitation?

there is both producer and consumer surplus, both supply and demand surplus. If there isn't, you're looking at abusive price discrimination.

When in the world will this meme end.

If I am paid to dig holes, then a hole is not worth anything to me except for what someone will pay for it.

I'm not going to stay at home and dig all these holes in my back yard and glimmer with glee at all this surplus value that I've kept to myself.

Code is the exact same. Me writing a python module to process a CSV file is not at all valuable to me, but the wage I'm paid for making it, is.

It's not exploitation. It's a very easy trade.