Wow, that sucks. I'm sure the figures are overblown, but even at a fraction that's still huge for the limited number of games and sites that they actually reported on.
When my wife worked for a game developer, she talked about how those designers would spend days and nights at the office, eating pizza from the night before for breakfast and not seeing their families because of the intense and rigorous schedules. There were some designers who got really good royalties due to very popular titles. But that was usually the exception. When I applied there, one of their questions was "are you married?" because they discouraged people who were married from working there due to the schedules and lack of being able to return home many times, usually during crunch time.
Turnover was pretty high, as you can imagine. I didn't get the job, for which my wife was VERY thankful. I don't believe pirates, for whatever excuse they have, should take away the money that those people have worked so hard to earn.
