From what I can gather (from the outside) this has changed over the years. Games are not monoliths anymore and some parts have to work for successors or other g

From what I can gather (from the outside) this has changed over the years. Games are not monoliths anymore and some parts have to work for successors or other games based on the same tools, so "things work for more than the bare minimum" has become more important over time. I'm sure there's still more than enough throwaway code, but that is probably not done in C++ currently either, but in some kind of scripting language.