I’m a little confused about what you mean. Is the implication that nobody (particularly employers) would care about being able to optimise a game because US games are so inefficient as demonstrated by their massive install sizes? That’s my guess but let me know if that’s incorrect. If my interpretation is correct then I don’t think that would make much of a difference. It’s not about needing to hire people who can do optimisation, it’s about the skill that went in to it and standing out from everybody else. If you were capable of learning that, on extremely old hardware with what I would assume requires a lot more manual work to do basic tasks compared to more modern game engines, imagine what they could do with all the extra tools!