8-hour workday laws are not new laws. Why do you think they are? And your view is basically that there should be no new laws, isn't it?
The relevant California law is that computer professionals are exempt from overtime law if they "mainly perform intellectual or creative work that requires independent judgment in the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of systems, programs, software or hardware. In 2012, they were required to earn $38.89 or more an hour ($81,026.25 or more annually, or $6752.19 or more monthly)."
My modification to that law would be to raise that to $75 or more per hour. What might be reasonable "horrific unintended consequences" of reclassifying programmers thusly?
"But at each studio there are usually less than 30 devs"
You don't know much about the history of unionization, do you. That's okay, neither do I. But I do know a bit more than you do.
The early unionizations include unions that came out of the guild system, not the factory system. For example, Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842), which settled that unions were legal in the US, dealt with the journeyman shoeworker Jeremiah Horne, who charged less than what the Boston Journeymen Bootmaker’s Society required.
It was legal for him to charge less, but then the Society would have called for a walkout. The master of the shop "would not wish to lose five or six good workmen for the sake of one", so fired Horne instead.
So we have a union which is effective even against a shop of 10 "boot developers", as it were.
Why do you think that unions are only effective in large factories? Do you mean to disregard the history of craft unionism, or are you speaking mostly out of a lack of knowledge?