I don't know about other European countries but in Germany it is usual for the big electronics chains (like Media Markt and Saturn who both belong to the Metro Group) to negotiate extremely generous payment targets, i.e. the chains get games from a distributor or sometimes directly from the publisher but they only need to pay after 90 - 180 days (in reality they pay after a "tolerable" additional delay so you can add another 30 - 60 days to those targets).

So it's not just the developer who gets a delayed payment but actually the distributor and/or the publisher do get their money with a fairly hefty delay as well.

To be honest, I think that the publisher is almost in the shittier situation here than the developer because the developer at least got paid during the development of the game (via the milestone payments) and if they are lucky then they are already getting paid again for developing an add-on/expansion/sequel/DLC/patches but the publisher might not have seen ANY money yet. Like... at all! Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Instead they might have spent three years funding development and then when the game is finally shipping they need to wait another three to six months before they get their first cheques from the retail chain. It would seem to be almost natural that the publishers would try to delay their royalty payments to the developer by some margin as well.

Naturally I don't have the insight that Lar does so I don't doubt at all that there are indeed black sheep among the publishers who have been pushing this way beyond the limits of "good taste" and who have become the cause of developer deaths. Shame on them! Rightfully so...
On the other hand let us not forget that there have also been plenty of headlines the past couple of years of publishers going bankrupt or of them experiencing severe financial woes. It's not just the devs who are dying. The publishers are suffering and dying, too.