You say this like it's a good thing. Do you really believe that Stern don't take this into account when planning production schedules? They are taking advantage of their employees' enthusiasm and commitment in order to maximise their profits, using free labour and short-changing customers in the process. This is one more reason NOT to buy from Stern.

Exactly. And if Stern know that this is going on, then they are almost certainly basing production schedules around it, releasing games with crappy code knowing that their progammers and designers will pick up the pieces off the clock.