But I do disagree with the decision to combine so many major revisions into one patch. Understanding that some changes are interrelated, going through the dev notes it appears there was enough clearly delineated content to release in several incremental updates. And, given the business model in use here, Alex would likely have profited from doing so: it's not just these forums that have gone a bit quiet, it's the half-dozen other places on the Internet where this game is discussed (how I and likely many others found this great game). The modding community would also have benefitted, but we should applaud Alex for releasing the new API early.
I definitely agree that the current update cycle took too long. (And I suppose it's still "taking", not "took" - for now!) But thinking back on it, I don't see any way to have reasonably made a release along the way. The only separate chunk is hyperspace, and that was only implemented a little while ago. Everything else - CR, logistics, campaign battle mechanics, new fighter mechanics, UI revamp - are all tied together. Maybe one or two of them could be released separately, but the amount of extra work to stub out the things they tie into would take too much time to make it an attractive option. One way to look at it is you could have all these features in smaller chunks along the way, but it'd literally take half again as long to get all of them.
To your larger point, I don't think this is actually an industry-wide attitude in game development. Many AAA companies are known for being in a state of constant crunch, with 80+ hour weeks and all that comes with it. I think where game development differs from other software development (or making a physical object, I suppose) is that you don't know exactly what you're making until you finally get there, unless what you're making is incredibly formulaic and by the numbers. Otherwise, a lot of the time is spent nailing down nebulous things like "is this fun", "could this be more fun", and "does this fit in with the overall vision", and it's simply impossible to predict how long that's going to take.
I think Valve is one of the few big companies to recognize this - or to at least act on it - and "Valve Time" is a direct result of that. They're not saying "we can't be bothered to make an estimate", they're saying "we
can't make an estimate, and if we had to and were held to it, the end product would suffer".
Another point is that in software dev (and I imagine elsewhere, too, though I can't speak to that from experience), working extreme hours doesn't mean higher productivity. From personal experience, there's certainly a point where more hours is a net negative in terms of productivity, though you can manage that to a point by saving "dumb" stuff for when you're not feeling too sharp. I also recall reading about a large game dev company that made everyone go home at 4pm - and had an increase in productivity as a result. I can't remember what company that was - Relic, I think? Could be wrong, not finding that article in google; it was about two years back.
Anyway, that's certainly not conclusive, and is an aside anyway, because the I think the hours worked are secondary to being unable to make accurate estimates. Rather, consistently extreme hours are a reaction to making incorrect estimates and then trying to meet them - a reaction that's counter-productive in the long run.