Isn't "come in, set up, do their job" most viable though if you're local to the project? I imagine a lot of the movie industry work takes place in LA, whereas game development work is spread out all over.
You could imagine that remote work might help in this situation, but I've heard stories about the difficulty of communicating artistic vision across geographically disperse teams.
Yeah it's true, but I don't know if it makes a difference in this case. Game developers are already working in locations that have big studios. They work for EA this year, get laid off, go work for somebody else next year, get laid off work for EA the next etc. They're already more or less there. It'd make more sense for them to work for a "Sivart13 Melbourne, Co., Ltd." and contract out your group of developers to whoever so they maintain employment.
Instead of going through expensive and time consuming HR processes every year, the publishers could just go through half a dozen contract negotiations instead.
You could imagine that remote work might help in this situation, but I've heard stories about the difficulty of communicating artistic vision across geographically disperse teams.