Sounds about right, when I left my last games gig I had to toss ~3mo of PTO because the company refused to pay it out(yay WA employment law) despite it being a specific benefit.
I never had a chance to use it since we were crunching so much that it just accrued until I left.
After the project, the company decided to take away a bunch of their leave days that were accumulated with the OT, because it was inconvenient for them. These are people who were there for 5-7 years.
I've freelanced all my life so I don't know how these things usually go, but it sounds pretty damn awful.