Total anecdotes, but when I last did the interview gauntlet it included some game studios and I found the hiring pipeline was bisected for the engine/dev tools

Total anecdotes, but when I last did the interview gauntlet it included some game studios and I found the hiring pipeline was bisected for the engine/dev tools and games themselves. I was looking at jobs on the former because of my experience, but they pretty consistently hire. The latter seems like a crap shoot where you have to get contacted by a recruiter right around the time the studio decides to throw bodies at a game. I've had zero luck with blind applications, every interview I had came from headhunters who sought me out.