I work at Ubisoft(in the UK[0]) and overtime and crunch are heavily discouraged, to a point where as a matter of policy, we are asked to report to higher management if anyne is asked to do overtime - it just shouldn't be happening at all. I've worked on two big AAA releases in the last 6 years and my total overtime was statistically zero, I did some extra hours in the last 2 weeks leading to release, but that was mostly to watch over the server infrastructure to make sure the launch went smoothly.
We've had people join from Rockstar, EA, CDPR, and one thing everyone is always surprised by is how good the work/life balance is. I'm personally in around 8am and always done by 4pm(7.5 hours a day).
[0] - now, all Ubisoft studios set their own policies. Please don't extrapolate my experience in the UK to experiences in other Ubisoft studios in other countries.
Yeah the games company I used to work for has gradually improved over the years - I have one good friend who stayed the whole time, and it's gone from "mandatory unpaid weekends" to "a bit of paid overtime here and there".
The key part I think is just making overtime paid, then the incentives all align much better.
We've had people join from Rockstar, EA, CDPR, and one thing everyone is always surprised by is how good the work/life balance is. I'm personally in around 8am and always done by 4pm(7.5 hours a day).
[0] - now, all Ubisoft studios set their own policies. Please don't extrapolate my experience in the UK to experiences in other Ubisoft studios in other countries.