Except with one intractable draw back that shadow volumes could eat up an unbounded amount of GPU fill rate, based on shadow caster geometry and your camera pos

Except with one intractable draw back that shadow volumes could eat up an unbounded amount of GPU fill rate, based on shadow caster geometry and your camera position. As a thought experiment, imagine trying to use stencil shadows in a jungle scene, something Crysis does just fine with shadow maps. Everything is a tradeoff, smoke and mirrors, tons of bullshit and often due to schedule pressure, a lot of takesybacksies.