Gaming

You see the results of indie devs that are successful but you don't see the ones that failed.

They do, though. Like, all the time. Many Indy companies start this way, and a lot of AA to even AAA studios started after high profile people were let go or otherwise left a bigger company to start their own.

They do. There are plenty of indie Devs.

The reason why everyone doesn't do it is because it requires significant capital to be able to support a dev team through production for a number of years.

Not to mention they will still have to deal with publishers potentially fucking them over, as shown with the Helldivers 2 PSN fiasco.

Indie studios do in fact exist. I haven't bought a game from a major publisher since... uhh... well, I guess I bought Portal for $1 last year, does Valve still count as a major publisher?

As a counterpoint to most of the cynicism here, this is how the company I now work for formed. Caveats include: the founder had a lot of money because he had previously worked for a big name Internet company when it was a startup, and we spend almost all of our time as contractors for other studios rather than developing in-house IP.

it takes time for a company to become profitable. the intentionally make sure to pay us so little we never have any run out

Short answer: money. It's no secret devs are usually overworked and underpaid so even a large-ish group of developers from even some of the more popular companies getting murdered simply can't afford to start a business. Some of them could go the Kickstarter route but few would be successful as is the way for Kickstarter.

Why does anyone who works not make their own company? It takes capital and a certain skill set as well as a risk tolerance.

Because game devs have to pay their rent.

If they go off to form their own studio, they probably have to take out a business loan to pay themselves for the time being. Interest rates are high right now, and rent and food are both expensive. It's a huge gamble to make a game and put it out on the assumption you'll be able to pay back 6%+ interest on whatever you took out. Games are not a reliable money maker. Especially from new studios.

Even if you get some sort of deal with a publisher to fund your first endeavor, there will still be strings attached to that, and publishers are pretty tight with the purse strings right now.

Which means really the only viable option, assuming you're not already independently wealthy, is that you have to work another job to work on the game in the meantime, which means it will take even longer to come out.

This might be tangentially relevant https://fed.dyne.org/post/146187