If you routinely run out of employees in your change of scope, you might just need to hire more people from the start.

Sure people cost money, so why hire them when you can exploit the ones you have already? The only way to stop that are unions/worker rights.

Can't change the holiday season timeline.

"Activision Blizzard employees developing the upcoming dark fantasy action role-playing game “Diablo IV” say it will be hard to meet a June 6, 2023, release date without working significant overtime, in a process they say has been plagued by mismanagement."

Not exactly a holiday release.

That gives them 6 months to get the servers reliably online, if I recall Diablo III correctly...

If you cant change the time line, don't change the scope. This isn't rocket surgery. This late into the project, the scope should be well defined.

I mean, especially in this era of DLC, why the need to increase the scope, anyways? Punt the extra ideas for later release.

I don't think crunch works but trying to define game scope 3 years out doesn't work either.

That's how you get Half Life 3..

That's fine, but then you should aggressively limit scope expansion.