pds41: That's not unique to the video game industry. Talk to anyone who works in finance at a large corporate, and it's exactly the same there. It's just not called crunch and doesn't get called out in the press - we talk about "Year End", "Audit", "Special Projects"...
^This.
There are two financial problems for companies regarding delays: Smaller companies don't have bottomless pockets to keep paying the developers and other staff until "when it's done". So the game needs to be released at some point, when the money runs out.
Bigger companies which could afford longer and multiple delays are usually publicly traded - they have to commit themselves to shareholder value first. When the management feels the shareholders aren't going to accept another delay with more costs (and those are pretty tremendous for large projects), they will first order "crunch" and then put the game out, whatever the state it is in.
Another problem is not directly related to money: Exhaustion and burn-out. When people work on the same project for years, their motivation will decline, their creativity. At some point these people need a break, and preferably a long one.
I think in the case of CP2077 it was a combination of needing to keep the shareholders at bay, and the devs being burnt out after years of development, and weeks and months of crunch (even if it was "mild"). Another delay would have to have been a really long one, starting with serious vacation for the team. And that would have been a problem with the shareholders.
They maneuvered themselves into this mess - my suspicion - when someone wasn't completely honest about the state of the game to the higher-ups, leading to completely unrealistic expectations about release dates in the upper spheres of management.
I've seen it a lot, team leader reporting 70% finished to the bosses when something between 40-50% would have been realistic. Nobody want's to be the messenger or scapegoat that gets shot, and especially the team leaders are easily accused of mismanagement, even if the circumstances had nothing to do with a lack of performances of the team. It's a bit like the OKW (Oberkommando Wehrmacht) still reporting big victories to the Führer bunker when the Red Army was already closing in on Berlin. And it happens in most larger companies, not only dev-related.