I've heard it said that there are two kinds of Software Engineers when it comes to Factorio.

There's one category who say "this is just like work, but I'm not getting paid to do it; why would I do this?"

Then there's the other who say "this is all the bits I enjoy of work, with a faster and more direct feedback loop and without all the admin/management/other-people bullshit; I want to do this for the rest of my life"

I am very much in the latter camp, but I can absolutely understand the former.

Option 3: "Solving these problems would be fun except they are too reminiscent of all the broken buggy real-world products that I came here to temporarily forget."

(Speaking from the Option 2 camp) Exactly! You finally get to fix them - doesn't that feel good!? :D (Yes, I understand your actual point :) )

I cannot think of any game that could approximate a full-time job as much as EVE (I am currently obsessed with factorio, which I play after working for 8 hours on production line automation systems)

Oh boy. Do many of your colleagues play, or at least understand your obsession? this reminds me of truckers playing trucking games in their rigs during downtime.

Oh yeah, i'm playing in a server with a colleague. The sane ones give us the look™ when mentioning it though.

With games there less negative repercussions if you fail. Like none.

Taken to an extreme, this would exclude any game with any element of problem solving, leaving just... cookie-clicker- and twitch-reflex-FPS-style games.