Developer Work Conditions

Unlike many, for a short time in my life I wanted to develop video games. And even til now, I thought that it'd be a great job to have. Like the article says, "Like film, television, advertising and other creative industries before, working in game development is a dream job; the rock star life. Often cast as the antithesis to the corporate environment – with open-space offices, after work LAN parties, and a relaxed dress code – this image exists in sharp contrast to the labor lives of our fathers and grandfathers." This ideal was quickly debunked for me after reading the Rockstar Spouse article. I wanted a little more information so I quickly read the EA Spouse post afterwards at livejournal and I'm convinced that these companies are evil.
The story starts with EA buying out the game company EA Spouse's husband worked for, and then offering him a job at EA. The salary and benefits sounded right so he took the job "I remember that they asked him in one of the interviews: 'how do you feel about working long hours?' It's just a part of the game industry -- few studios can avoid a crunch as deadlines loom, so we thought nothing of it. When asked for specifics about what 'working long hours' meant, the interviewers coughed and glossed on to the next question; now we know why."
So he started working there and all was fine and dandy. A few weeks passed and a "pre-crunch" started in order to keep a big crunch from developing at the end: 6 day weeks/8 hour days which isn't bad. "The producers even set a deadline; they gave a specific date for the end of the crunch, which was still months away from the title's shipping date, so it seemed safe. That date came and went. And went, and went. When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm." It eventually grew to seven days a week "with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm)." The thing that got me was, the company was never ahead of schedule because of all the work they put in. Nor was it at any point behind schedule in the development. It was always right on schedule, meaning EA knew full well from the beginning that these crunches were to be scheduled to make the deadline.
The worst part is that workers didn't gain anything from these extra hours but the privilege of keeping their jobs. They received no overtime, no compensation time, and no extra sick or vacation time. "Additionally, EA recently announced that, although in the past they have offered essentially a type of comp time in the form of a few weeks off at the end of a project, they no longer wish to do this, and employees shouldn't expect it."
So why do people work for these people choose to work here? EA Spouse sums it up nicely:
"...in all likelihood if we had known that this would be the result of working for EA, we would have stayed far away in the first place. But all along the way there were deceptions, there were promises, there were assurances -- there was a big fancy office building with an expensive fish tank -- all of which in the end look like an elaborate scheme to keep a crop of employees on the project just long enough to get it shipped. And then if they need to, they hire in a new batch, fresh and ready to hear more promises that will not be kept; EA's turnover rate in engineering is approximately 50%. This is how EA works."
I saw that EA Spouse's post was written back in November of 2004, almost 6 years ago. Maybe things have changed? But then I saw the Rockstar article was written just 9 months ago. I guess not, things are still the same. So I ask, how can these companies get away with long extra hours with no compensation whatsoever? How can it be stopped? Will it ever be stopped?