Larian Studios' CEO says, "we did have to do a bit of crunch" making Baldur's Gate 3

but we did have to do a bit of crunch. And I think, to be honest, you will always have a little bit when you're trying to finish something, especially when there's so much complexity that needs to be brought together.

What does doing "a bit of crunch" even mean? Crunch means you're (practically) forced to work overtime, there is no excuse for this IMO. The game was on early access for a while, surely they could've delayed its full release by a bit to prevent this.

I agree.
Crunch is a project management failure. This is my professional opinion as a tech lead at a mid sized gaming company.
When I saw all the praise the game received at release, the level of detail etc. My first thought was, so what was the cost on individuals?
Don’t get me wrong, this is an amazing game. But I worry that a lot of overtime went into this.
And other projects will be measured against that. This might set another very bad example.
- Exactly. I can think of one valid reason for a crunch: production is down. That's it.
Release windows can make or break a game, and they were counter programming Starfield, which they expected to be a bigger deal. I would interpret "a bit of crunch" to be a few weeks rather than the several month death march you hear about in game development all the time.
- IMO crunch has no excuse; it is a decision that benefits the business while hurting the workers.
  "A few weeks" of crunch translates to hundreds of extra working hours.
Here's a video by Tim Cain that I think covers this topic well: link
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I recently interviewed for a software job where they want you to work at least 12 hours per day.

During the first interview, I had asked about work-life balance, too, and the HR rep said, "well I'm not an engineer, so I'm not sure." And then after my fourth interview, she goes, "just so you know, this will be a high intensity position. There is not much of a work/life balance.

The fuck do you mean, "fourth interview"??
- This has been the norm for bigger tech companies for a while. I recently went through 4 interviews with a company that went great at every step. Had a chat with a HR folk after that about expectations, laid out my salary expectation, then was suddenly rejected the next day on not having enough relevant experience (I have literally 20 years of relevant experience).
  I think they were looking for someone slightly less senior initially, but c'mon. Why waste everyone's time going through that whole process if you have no budget? I saw the post is still open and being refreshed on LinkedIn more than 6 months later.
- Chiming in to echo others with my experience in my current job I had three interviews (that I remember, but I think it might have actually been four). The interviews that I remember in order were HR, engineering management, the rest of the engineering team. The HR interview was by phone and mostly to validate that we were on the same page as far as things like pay, qualifications, job description, etc. The second interview was with engineering management and done via Teams with video. The third was in person and in addition to another brief talk with engineering management they also showed me where I would be working and had me talk to various people on my current team to see how they liked me.
  It has pros and cons. The biggest con I think is having HR and ATS at the front of the process as there are likely really good candidates that are filtered out as a result of not being able to balance their resume in such a way that both HR and Engineering sees their value.
- Yeah, we do 3 and I think that's one too many. But we've rejected people in each round, so I guess it's working.
- You must be new here
Did you laugh in their face?