I only ever saw an hourly contract once in my entire time in that industry and it took 2-3 weeks to sort out due to the fact that HR had never done one before a

I only ever saw an hourly contract once in my entire time in that industry and it took 2-3 weeks to sort out due to the fact that HR had never done one before at a pretty large-sized dev shop. In all the places I worked there was an informal crunch period and then a very explicit one. Even during one of the formal crunch period I would catch shit for leaving at 10pm even though I was in at 8am. There was definitely a visibility aspect that if you were staying till 1-2am and rolling in at noon that was considered that you were contributing "more". There's a couple shops that do a decent job but large swaths of the industry are completely dysfunctional. There's also a confirmation bias where if a successful game ships with crunch it is perceived as one of the contributing factor to their success and then further drives crunch across the industry.