I will never understand the affection people have for Salvatore, even those who claim to dislike him. As far as I’m concerned, this is all garbage tier work that gives the genre a bad name. But whatever else you might think of him, Gaider can write dialogue that at least bears a passing resemblance to something a human being might say. Salvatore cannot. Bizarrely, over decades in the industry, anytime his characters talk it’s almost stunning how bad it is.
http://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/Archmage_Sample.pdf
I just inflicted some samples of both authors on myself. Salvatore tries and fails to establish a faux-epic tone and it’s really fucking grating. Gaider’s prose is smoother, even as it’s very clear that he’s writing young adult fiction with young adult characters for a young adult audience. Gaider knows he’s a hack and he doesn’t make it worse by trying to do things that are beyond his ability. Salvatore is only superior if you think that his work is elevated by the author’s cringe inducing attempts to ape Tolkien.
Gaider tries to do something unremarkable (also undesirable) and he mostly seems to succeed at hitting that very low bar. Salvatore tries to do something better, but he fails miserably. They’re both bad in different ways and YMMV, but sentence for sentence reading Salvatore is painful; reading Gaider is merely mind numbing.
And I would hesitate before comparing Salvatore favorably to game writers. We have examples of his own writing within the medium: the lore for Amalur. I can’t bring myself to read more of his shit but I would be surprised if it’s any better than your average RPG writer.