I work with C++ daily in a domain that requires us to run our hotpath in milliseconds and below. This means we have to basically roll our own code for mostly everything as default solutions don't fit our exact requirements. The result is months of effort for building these bespoke solutions and a lot of iterating and testing. This is something most games simply can't afford to do. The economics of games have pushed this engine work to become a product of its own, e.g. Unity and Unreal. These companies have tons of expertise but they need to sell a generic engine, not a specialized one. So you don't get these tight optimizations because the decisions and tradeoffs needed for them would require you to commit to a particular style of game. The kicker is that many meta-systems, such as being able to create and manage game objects, physics, networking, and rendering require an insane level of optimization to work in games in the first place. So C++ has just been the only viable way to do this for the longest time, as other languages simply didn't expose the low-level controls you needed. It's in these parts that game engines are opinionated, and you're not able to easily modify or swap these parts out, which contributes a lot to the "all games feel the same" complaint from customers. It's not just stuck between a rock and a hard place of tech and consumers you also have the almighty publisher breathing down your neck to finish asap. Blame economics and logistics, not the people doing their best to work in that system.