I don't know of any other industries that have normalized masochistic crunch to anywhere near the degree that most of the game industry has, and I've worked in

I don't know of any other industries that have normalized masochistic crunch to anywhere near the degree that most of the game industry has, and I've worked in some pretty freaking crunchy sausage factories. The game industry really takes it to the next level, in part because it's an employer's market- a lot more people love the idea of being a game dev than there are game dev positions available, so high turnover rates are actually sustainable for much of the game industry, leading to some horrific practices. If there are other industries that are up there with the game industry in terms of extreme crunch, I'd be very curious to hear about them. I don't doubt they exist, I just am not aware of them. There's also nightmares like 996 schedules in China, but I've heard that in many cases that's more pretend crunch for show than actual crunch. In some ways 996 is even lamer because it's so pointless and dystopian, but I bet many game devs would be jealous of people who only have to work 72 hours a week and only have to pretend to work for some of that time.