http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts#Treatment_of_em...

It was basically standard in the industry for everyone to work weekends and nights for a month before release. It's calmed down perhaps and more people are hourly so at least they get paid for it, but it's still expected that you will put in significant weekend and evening hours before a milestone.

One issue is that a lot of the games don't seem to develop well under more Agile practices. Games are very large projects and it can be hard to build them incrementally, so they always end up with the standard software-management over-budget and deadline slips.

At least, this is what I'm told by my wife and friends in the industry. I still believe that their requirement of overtime is due to poor management, pressure by execs, poor specs, and inflated goals.

It's only a requirement because game developers have tended to put up with it. Especially in the earlier days, game development attracted people who were extremely passionate about making games. This meant they were willing to put up with a lot of shit. You don't have to ascribe much malice or incompetence to companies to explain crunch time under those conditions--it would be more surprising if it hadn't happened. Fortunately, things have changed for the better, although there's still a long way to go.

I'm fine with crunch time so long as (1) it is surgically applied, (2) employees know what they're getting into, and (3) employees are rewarded for going above and beyond the call of duty.