Edited sentence: At these times a clean and bug free version of the game are expected to be delivered to the production company for further scrutinizing and analysis.Crunch time also happens a few times throughout a game's development stages, not just the last 3-5 months towards the end of the project.Crunch time has become such a problem the Video Game Industry that major production companies have and are still being sued to date by not just overworked, sleep deprived employees, but their spouses and families for taking so much time out their own personal lives.It is fairly commonplace for developers to put in a 12+ hour day, 6-7 days a week when these crunch times occur, sometimes going weeks before having a day off.Just as well there is fault of a developer sometimes taking on much more than they can chew and making goals hard to hit.Most of this is the fault of marketing dates that don't take into account the scope and time it takes to make a game hit the shelves and still be good... let alone fun to play and look great.That coupled with an organized and well experienced producer that can set reasonable schedules for the development team, can minimize crunch times.There's also crunch time during the weeks that a greenlight, milestones, Alpha and Beta builds are to be made.This can be made less severe if the internal development team has a strong creative director and level designer from the beginning.This of course can lead to much stress and anxiety as work is often cut or changed to make the deliverable by it's deadline.Video games are one of the last entertainment industries that still does not have a union in place for its creative staff even though it can turn as much a profit and sometimes more than the film industry