Happen more than you think, despite the absurd metaphor. Maybe there was an inferno in the neighbohood and no time to worry about the fire in the corner of the apartment. Maybe your publisher doesn't care if your house burns down but wants to make money now for their own earnings.

I don't think it's uncommon even outside of gaming for modern software to have these sort of "hidden fires". Games just get a lot more conversation and a lot of niche problems as a 3D real time application.

But gamedev usually means, all new faces teams, as the old one quits in lockstep. So it's very likely a bunch of youngsters running around yelling "premature optimization" is the death of all good things. Mistaking that with needing no optimization plan at all until game is almost done.

No, friend, poly counts are rarely a raging fire these days. Not 10k poly counts. That was in the 90s.