I wouldn’t be quite that cynical, but gaming is known for tons of extra hours.

All companies I have known with bad hours have also officially had 40 hour weeks.

I want to point my finger at you and accuse you of cynicism (sp?). But then I remember that colleague who was crunching as a part time employee, and yeah you have all the right in the world to be because gamedev has always been quite fucked up.

I do believe (and hope to be correct) that many gamedev studios are getting much better, but there's plenty still to do.

Sure but one thing is saying it and the other thing is living it. The hard deadlines of peak sales periods like Christmas seem like are still constant drivers of death marches in that industry.

Sentiments seems good but I’m skeptical.

Yeah right. More likely it's 32 hours/week unless it's less than 2 years before a deadline and then it's 80 hours/week.

You can't expect them to release how much they're actually working their employees. Games is a notoriously vicious cycle of work.