[swivelmaster]

Some places are still like this. EA is not. I worked at a company that was acquired by EA in late 2011 and stayed until 2016. Post-acquisition, EA's HR folks made sure that a whole bunch of the studio's staff were properly classified (salary vs. hourly) and that the studio was following proper procedure regarding timecards and overtime. The studio also hired on some senior staff to deal with operations and production practices.

There were still some bad times - politics outside of the studio forced staff into some do-or-die milestones that required crunching for a week or two at a time, but nothing like the kind of sustained months-to-years crunch I've heard about in other places.

The funny thing about EA is that even though it has such a bad rap for making big mistakes in the past, they made them FIRST and have managed to learn. A lot of other major publishers that grew to comparable size more recently are still making them.