It seems more like its to save money on office real estate and the fees that come with that like cleaning services, security, etc than it is about being employee friendly.
So I'm not too surprised it chose to size down physical locations when push came to shove, compared to other tech companies in SV doubling down on their billion dollar real estate they built.
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.
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".
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.
Well to be fair that didn't work out that well either...
> also the employees
Still almost dirt cheap by SF standards.