Crunch
Also said as Crunch time, Death march, Overtime
Long stretches of forced overtime to hit a date, sometimes for months and often unpaid. It is common in the games industry, it damages people, and it is usually the result of a planning failure.
It is sold as dedication. The older research on working hours says that output per hour falls with long hours, until the extra hours buy nothing and the error rate climbs. People burn out and leave, and they take their experience with them.
Say it
“We are not solving this with overtime. We are three months over, so cut the second biome and the co-op mode now, and keep everyone at 40 hours.”
Where you’ve seen it
The "EA Spouse" post in 2004 described mandatory days from 9am to 10pm, seven days a week, at Electronic Arts. In 2018 Dan Houser said "100-hour weeks" on Red Dead Redemption 2, then clarified that it meant a few senior writers for three weeks. In 2020 CD Projekt Red made six-day weeks mandatory on Cyberpunk 2077, having said earlier that crunch there would not be compulsory.
Not to be confused with passion
Choosing to stay late on your own project is one thing. Being expected to, with your job or your credit at stake, is crunch, and calling it passion is how it gets accepted.