Ever since the EA Spouse blog spread like wildfire across the Internet, plenty of attention has been focused on unpaid overtime in the game industry. Multiple class-action lawsuits have been filed against Sony Computer Entertainment America, Electronic Arts, and Vivendi Universal Games, among others. At the heart of the matter is that workers feel they've been improperly labeled as exempt from receiving overtime, which results in large financial losses to them since they're working just as long over 40 hours as they are under it. Making sense of it all is C|Net, who compiled a report that comprehensively explains the situation.

The recent rash of overtime suits in the game industry, and California's labor rules, could well backfire, EA spokesman Jeff Brown warned. He said higher labor costs could push the company to move more of its work out of the state, to places including a new studio being built in China. "This isn't a problem (just) for EA," Brown said. "This is a problem for the state of California." ... To [Tom Buscaglia, an attorney who founded an organization to increase the presence of the game industry in Florida], the lawsuits are a wake-up call for the game industry to switch to more reasonable hours and to keep talented people from leaving the industry. "Ultimately, it makes for better games," he said. "And it makes for a better lifestyle for the people who make them."