I wish game companies would stop doing this. It isn't a badge of honor, and it isn't impressive. You've been working on this for 7 years. Why is there still crunch time? How badly managed does a project have to be that you work on it for almost decade and still have to force your workers to kill themselves to get it out on time?
It's prolly an Executive call.
I doubt the executives just sprung a surprise release date on them after 7 years of work though. 100 hour weeks should not even be on the table
No, but an executive COULD look at current gaming trends and demand that a feature or something be added at the last minute, forcing teams to work around the clock to keep from getting delayed. I'd bet money that the success of GTA Onlne is the reason for this particular crunch, since I doubt the devs were working towards making Online a core part of the game back when work first started.
Or you know hire more people if you need your employees to all work two shifts.
Depending on when the executive decree was made, hiring may not have been a feasible solution without slipping the deadline. It takes time to put out a job req, go through the HR process of bringing someone in, and it can take weeks to spin someone up on a large project to the point where they can be productive. Plus there's the issue of what to do with the people you hired exclusively for an unexpected crunch (spoilers: they get fired). Sometimes overtime is the only way to get something done on time because you're putting the experts who are most familiar with the system in charge of making additional changes, and that experience and knowledge is difficult to just replace with more bodies.
For short time frame sure.
But this kind of thing is common in the game industry which basically only works in crunch time hours. ---