I have mixed feelings looking back on K. Rool's inclusion in Smash. On one hand, he's one of the best designed SSBU newcomers, a really fun character, and represents a great classic game series - but on the other, he got in through the ballot, which I feel was super exploitative; he contributes to the major issues of SSBU's roster being too monetarily-minded by being a fan demand pick; and a lot of his supporters did have a kinda strange (even if not necesarilly malicious) ulterior motive where they wanted him as a trojan horse to get him in a new DK platformer and not Smash alone. I might just be thinking of this negatively because being so excited for K. Rool was a bit of a minor trauma for me, but still.
All these complaints are specific to NOA, we don't know much about Nintendo of Japan, though I find it difficult to believe there isn't at least some record of crunch given its history. The NOA settlement got some headlines and discussion when it was first reported. Unfortunately that kind of union-busting is really standard practice, you can assume pretty much every company has some record of union-busting, especially in the famously ununionised game industry. Only recently have things began to change, it's a **** situation.