The other reason is that in my well closer circle i got quite some people that code c++ on a daily basis and i don't know (at least i think so) anyone doin C# actively, so i thought if i would get stuck i have people i can easily ask about my c++ problems.
So it wasn't a "i think c++ is better than c#" decision rather a what do i know and what resources i have available easily.
If you look more at Stride, you’ll see that even their physics engine is C# which is insane in the best possible way: https://doc.stride3d.net/4.3/en/Manual/physics/index.html and https://github.com/bepu/bepuphysics2
Very cool language and as much of a mainstay in gamedev like something like Lua.
It surprises me that Java never got similarly big despite their GC improvements, though jMonkeyEngine was a nice project last I looked.
The catch was that you had to use C# and XNA (which was a wrapper for gaming related APIs like DirectX, XAudio and XInput, generally considered to be very good). This meant there were a lot of hardcore libs made for C# gamedev (BEPU physics is from that era, and there were things like very good UI frameworks).
Tons of games were made with XNA, and its open source ofshoots, MonoGame and FNA power some of the greatest indie hits (Stardew Valley, Celeste, Bastion and other Supergiant titles, Terraria come to mind).
Imo this is one of the main reasons Unity went with C# in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_Wars
C# being closer to C++, and .NET having direct support for C++ helped quite a bit regarding adoption among game studios.
Unity started on Mac, and they only adopted .NET when doing the cross platform rewrite.
I also don't remember if there wasn't some Mono advocacy at the time, as they became customers in the process.
Ironically Mono/Xamarin is almost gone from official .NET, all these years after the acquisition, with every modern .NET release, another bit falls off.
We are already on the phase that CoreCLR might take the remaining bits.