Dont think this ever existed really. I live in San Francisco and I grew up in Cupertino and I am 40 years old. I know and have known many folks in game development, let me tell you they love money and always have. They have massive houses (an average home around here goes for around $650k to $1.2 million) and fancy cars, go on extravagant vacations and so forth. Its pretty much been this way since the humble beginnings.
Lying liar is lying. Are you sure you aren't confusing the majority of game developers and single people who made a name for themselves at the beginning of the whole era (i.e. Carmack and Sid Meier)? Sure, nobody works for free, but if game development paid that highly with almost no entry barrier (learn C++ and get yourself an IDE with a couple of libraries) there would be way more people there.
Not sure you quite get how it works, its pretty much the same as any corporation environment. You start out as a nobody and work your way up. By the time you are 40, or even 30 for that matter, and you are still in the scene, believe me you probably got yourself a good paycheck. 70k-90k isnt that far fetched around here. You can buy a house for that much money in a lot of states (not here). Thats just 1 years worth salary and you can own a home in some other place.
And there are WAY tons of people working in game development here. We got Sega, Zynga, heck theres more big houses but I am not going to drag out the research, and dozens of smaller houses that make some pretty popular games, including some of them that this forum has posted Kickstarters about. Dont know a single game developer that doesnt own their house and have a nice car.
Granted, I dont hang out with the Indy scene folks, those are usually younger people trying to build their careers and make a name for themselves. I dont want to make any judgements or project my reality on anyone, but I would be shocked if some coffeeshop wannabe indy developer thats eating Top Ramen would turn down the $60k/year salary if it was offered to them.
But, we digress.