[simias]

I agree with you completely, I'm not arguing that these studios are behaving ethically. I'm just pointing out that the fact that videogame studios have bad working conditions has been public knowledge for a long time and the engineers who apply for these jobs have to be aware of it. Yet they still decide to get into these jobs even though I'm certain that the vast majority of them could land a more comfortable and probably better paid developer job elsewhere.

I realize that I'm playing the "blame the victim" game and I'm not entirely comfortable with that but in this case it reminds me of that guy who knowingly got in touch with a cannibal to get eaten. If you know what's going to happen and you still on your own free will and without external pressure decide to continue on that path can you really complain that things are exactly how you knew they were going to be?

Are these people coerced in any way to work for these game studios? Were they lied to? Didn't they know that AAA game development is a thankless, soul-crushing task with very tight deadlines and terrible work ethics? Because I remember having almost exactly this conversation with a friend at school more than 15 years ago when he told me he wanted to become a game developer.