I meant to post this as a comment in a post earlier but it ran a bit long so I'm posting it separately!

As someone very deep in the gamedev sphere, to me the most insidious shit is how terrible the CDPR company culture must be for this sort of thing to happen. I have so many fucked up stories about the gamedev world I don't know where to begin.

I have friends that work at triple-As like Ubisoft and seeing them cope coming home to their distraught partner by 9PM every night on a normal, non-crunch schedule by saying "oh well, the team is energized so I just HaVe to WoRK" is heartbreaking. Like, I have the extreme chance of working at a super cozy place where I can start the day by congratulating the MAS, we all dogpile eachother when we push past 5PM and hell, I love gamedev so much that after closing my work Unity window I just open my hobby Unity window but damn, even I think no one should keep working on some B-List Ubisoft game DLC until it's dark out just because "the team is energized". And that's not even mentioning the absolutely rachitic paychecks that you get if you're an "intern", a man - or both. And can I mention the fact that at a bunch of triple-A studios, dating inside the office is encouraged since it keeps you in longer?

You know that when you arrive at Ubisoft there's an "arrival camp experience" where they make you sit down, hand you a branded backpack filled with junk and fry your brain with a sizzle reel welcoming you to the "Ubisoft FamilyTM"? It's ridiculous. It's not because the office has a cafeteria with free breakfast and you have reduced prices on the massage place downstairs that any of this shit is worth it. It's fucking games; it's some random sweaty grizzled character knocking heads in some wasteland or another. It's revolting how worker indoctrination starts from the minute you enter university and then it's just a big "I want to work at a triple A" downward spiral from there. They take all the scrappy young adults burning the candle from both ends, squeeze out all the juice out of them and then wave them farewell when they inevitably leave from the triple-A to someplace smaller, like all boomers reccomend "working at McDonalds as a first job to build character".

What's sad as hell is that I guarantee that if you were to enter the CDPR office right now you would probably run into a majority of sweaty, delirious people telling both you and themselves that "we're making something awesome and we're all in this together, I just feel lucky to be a part of this" and that any suggestion that the way things are done are unsustainable would be instantly rebuffed. That's not to say that you wouldn't find people silently crying or hating it, but you know as well as me that it's like anti-union efforts; if you build up a small part of the workforce into patrolmen, any discourse that is not "yes, please, more" is quelled instantly.

I'm exhausted that the myth of "good 3DCG art/artisanship is always best created under duress" perdures to this day - I have worked regular hours, long hours, I have slacked off and I have crunched and I can tell you that it's NEVER worth it... But inevitably, just like you'll find someone to tell you Bezos only owns Amazon stocks, you'll find someone to tell you that "Hey, I wanted to work here and I like it" as their skin sags, they lose hair and their relationships dissolves or as they turn into high-arterial-tension, bloated upper management cockroaches. Fucking triple A shit, who cares that your epic tattoo robot punk has extra bright red dot sights or whatever, in the large scope of it it doesn't fucking matter.