>There's physically no way to reasonably make everyone RTO because there are multiple big bases
Sure, but from what I saw a lot of these VFX/arts/game studios despite being international, still mandate their teams to be in-office a certain amount of days per week due to the nature of creative work. Especially that certain things like a games or VFX tend to not have their development spread internationally, but are usually developed by only a certain branch office, in which case some days of in-person collaboration might be more productive.
Yeah, games are in a weird place because console dev kits were paranoid as all hell when it came to usage. There'd be office mandates purely because you couldn't take those home, nor even remote into one without a bunch of red tape. There's still remnants of that to this day, which is probably why they couldn't be even more aggressive on remote status.
That is fortunately one big thing loosened over COVID, though; could never imagine having a devkit in my own house before 2020.
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can't speak too much for the vfx industry. I imagine its similar culture and NDA contracts in terms of where content can "stay".
Devkits have been software locked for a while now and need an always on internet connectivity to the mothership to work, so even if the HW kit would leak onto e-bay, there's nothing you can do with them as they would immediately be backlisted and usually that leads to the studio being blacklisted as well for the blunder so it's natural the studios don't want them to leave the office. You never know which disgruntled employee would rage-quit taking the devkit with him leaving you to deal with the wrath from the console manufacturer.
When I was doing some security evaluations on a gaming console it was mandatory to lock the HW samples in a vault at the end of the business day when the last person to leave the office was done with them. Naturally that made WFH impossible even during covid.
Sure, but from what I saw a lot of these VFX/arts/game studios despite being international, still mandate their teams to be in-office a certain amount of days per week due to the nature of creative work. Especially that certain things like a games or VFX tend to not have their development spread internationally, but are usually developed by only a certain branch office, in which case some days of in-person collaboration might be more productive.