Gaming Publishers and Developers that actually "won" your respect.

[rokaraged]

Sorry if this is a doublepost! (any kind mod wanna delete the other thread?)

With the whole Sim City debacle, everyone and their dog is trying to crucify EA and their god forsakened Origin. We collectively as gamers are always criticizing and complaining about companies ruining our gaming experiences or failing to deliver. Nowadays its a rare occasion gamers will collectively praise a specific company (outside of Valve!)

But, think its about time we all lay off those torches and pitchforks for a bit and try to define what constitutes a good "gaming company."

What gaming companies that in your opinion actually do gaming and gamers "right?"

Personally I've grown to respect Doublefine, especially with their porting of brutal legend to the PC.

Also a shoutout to PerfectWorld. Compared to most f2p gaming companies, they deliver a better experience than say....NEXON. Been playing Blacklight Retribution and its suprisingly hacker/aimbot free for a F2p shooter.

 

[PsychicTaco115]

Rocksteady

Making one of the greatest licensed games and then TOPPING THAT earns my respect points!

 

[hazabaza1]

While I'm not the biggest fan of their games, CD Projekt Red is pretty much undeniably great to their customers.

 

[shrekfan246]

Eh, people have been crucifying EA for far longer than SimCity.

OT: Take-Two Interactive.

They publish a lot of high-quality games between themselves, Rockstar, and 2K Games, and I've rarely (if ever) seen them do the same kind of bitching and excuse-making that Activision or EA throw out.

THQ had my respect back before they went bankrupt, too. Wasn't particularly a fan of most of their franchises myself, but they had a lot of really good IPs under their belt, and they treated them relatively well.

Atlus is another one. They seem to be more on the ball about localizing and stuff than Nippon Icchi, Namco Bandai, or Square Enix.

Bungie, because Marathon, Oni, and Halo.

Kojima Productions (hah!) because Metal Gear Solid. Not quite enough to make me respect Konami though.

And a bunch more, really.

 

[krazykidd]

Atlus . Since i'm not for EU and we canadians actually got Persona 4 arena , i got to say these guys make pretty damn goodgames . And for the time being , i'll purchase anything with Atlus on it .

Also NiS america . Great games . Love these guys .

From sofware gave us Demon's and dark souls . They gave me a hard and fun game i gave them my respect . Unless they make an easy mode in Dark souls , then all respect is gone .

Other than that i don't really look at publishers/ Devs . I only care about quality

 

[sanquin]

CD Projekt Red for me as well. The Witcher 1 was...flawed but refreshing in the rpg genre and beautiful. The cities and such also felt more alive than in previous rpg's I've played. Then their stance about piracy became public and I only liked them more. I had borrowed the game from a friend before, but soon after that I bought it if only to support them. (getting to keep on playing the game was a plus too of course.) And then it got even better. The enhanced edition came out, which improved the game nicely. And it was free too.

Years later The Witcher 2 also came out. And it felt like the company had really listened to player feedback. It had greatly improved in gameplay, story pacing/telling and UI compared to it's prequel. Then they started sending people that had illegally downloaded the game bills of...roughly 5x the game's value I believe. That sucked big time...but then, once again showing they listen to their playerbase, stopped doing so because of a ton of negative feedback. And once again an enhanced edition for the game came out, for free.

Really, I wish all companies were (still) like CD Projekt Red.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Another vote for CD Projekt Red. They're kind of the Good Guy Company of the hour.

Valve won me back with generous Steam Sales and quality games. I actually hated them around the time Half Life 2 launched. It was a buggy piece of shit at launch, and Steam was an abomination that caused endless headaches. And the industry was cuddling up with bought and paid for reviews even back then, which was hard to stomach.

 

[piinyouri]

CD Projekt.
Opinions of The Witcherss quality and occasional immaturity aside, they are a peoples company.

 

[DoPo]

With the whole Sim City debacle, everyone and their dog is trying to crucify EA and their god forsakened Origin.

Erm, welcome to the Internet, I suppose. I'm sure you'll get up to speed quickly.

OT: Too many to count, I suppose. Let's see, the ones that immediately come to mind:

Arrowhead Studios - they made Magicka which was the game I have been waiting for for so long yet I didn't know it. I really wanted a game that had cool and interesting magic system and Magicka provided. Also, it was fun from start to finish, filled with amazingness and other stuff I didn't expect but welcomed warmly. The guys also recently released The Showdown Effect which looks awesome but I've yet to pick it up (I would, though, it's #1 on my wishlist).

Klei Entertainment - I was recently pleasantly surprised [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.402591-Pleasantly-surprised-by-Mark-of-the-Ninja] by them, so I'll keep my eye on them.

Runic Games - I played Torchlight 1 and it was...all right, I suppose. Not bad but got a bit boring - everything just died providing no challenge. Then I played TL2. I didn't even look forward to it or anything - I was more or less forced to try it out...and I just loved it so much. I looked into them and Runic seemed like a capable and likeable lot, too.

Nival Interactive - Etherlords 2 was interesting and engaging. Then they got their hands on making Heroes 5. And they made a masterful job with it, I must say.

Arkane Studios - I don't really like their games, I must say. But I do respect them, though. Arx Fatalis was probably the one I like the best and even though I won't suggest getting Dark Messiah of Might or Magic unless you cover a significant portion of criteria, it's still a game I respect. Dishonored...as a game, it's meh, as a world - wow. My second favourite game of theirs...of the three games.

Obsidian Entertainment (also affiliates, as well as previous and alternative reincarnations - Troiks, Black Isle, etc.) - dammit if their games aren't a mess of bugs and unfinishness, and lack of polish, and whole sort of other problems. Dammit if those aren't one of the best games I've played, too. There is just this raw essence that makes me not mind the rough edges the slightest.

Ugh, I can go on and on, I should stop here - those were the first few that came to mind, which is what I promised myself to list.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. They are a publisher, but they own TT Games (responsible for the Lego video games), Monolith Productions (Guardians of Middle-Earth, F.E.A.R.), Rocksteady Studios(Batman: Arkham Asylum/City), Netherrealm Studios (Mortal Kombat reboot and the upcoming Injustice: Gods Among Us), and Turbine, Inc. (Lord of the Rings Online).

What makes me respect them, though, is how they approach the companies they own. After purchasing Netherrealm Studios, they informed the people there that when it came to making Mortal Kombat games, rather than follow Midway's strategy of "One game a year, no matter what," Netherrealm Studios was to take however long it took to make a game that matched the standards of the publisher. That shows that WBIE understands that making a good game takes time, and is willing to work with the studio to make it happen.

 

[Zhukov]

Grruhh... fine, CD Project Red.

I think their game are kind of poop, but there's no faulting their business practices. Also, I'm kinda looking forward to seeing if they can pull off Cyberpunk.

Oh, and Valve, obviously.

 

[NightmareExpress]

In no particular order:
Valve, DoubleFine, Mojang, Nintendo, RockStar, Atlus, Bungie, CD Projekt Red.

Some fond memories caused me to put Nintendo and RockStar on there.
But I think of all that list, they would rank pretty low if I bothered to structure it.
The rest of them have provided outstanding service and have remained connected to their fanbases to a degree fairly unheard of with most other companies.

 

[Cabisco]

Rockstar and Bungie are two companies where I'm willing to put money into their products without knowing much about them, I regard/trust them that highly and so far I haven't been let down.

 

[shrekfan246]

Atlus is another one. They seem to be more on the ball about localizing and stuff than Nippon Icchi, Namco Bandai, or Square Enix.

Heh, not if you live in Europe, we still don't have Persona 4 Arena due to the bloody region lock and Zen United (the people who are localizing it here) are incompetent. So sadly, Atlus lost my respect on that part (despite loving most of the games they put out)

I dunno if you can really blame them when they're not actively publishing it in the region. Unless the reason it was delegated to Zen United was because they just flat-out didn't want to localize it to Europe. Either way, guess it's fortunate that I live in the US.

Plus, it's just one game. Not nearly as long a list as the number of blunders -

OT: Square Enix: They had some rough patches (Like the disappointment that was FF13 and the failure of FF14) but lately, they are doing very impressive stuff, trust me, if Kingdom Hearts HD comes overseas, I will totally love them again.

- These guys have had over the past three years.

[sub][sub]Like not localizing Final Fantasy Type-0, or any of the Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix releases, and completely dropping the ball with Final Fantasy, dragging out Versus XIII while giving no information as to its actual state which simultaneously has relegated the entire Kingdom Hearts franchise to spin-offs that are spanning every single handheld released because Nomura is busy with vaporware, and leaving The World Ends With You to rot in purgatory with no sequel or anything announced...[/sub][/sub]

 

[I Max95]

any game companies that release full games at the regular price without nickel-an-diming or any other bullshit practice

so, Valve, Rockstar, Bethesda , Mojang, TellTale, etc



I would say Bioware since Mass Effect is my favorite game series ever, but no, with all that EA shit going on, Bioware has my affection, but not my respect

 

[Auron]

Paradox both as developer and publisher is about the most honest and open company I know in gaming.

Rocksteady is awesome for making the best comic game in the history of gaming even though their publishers are trash with highly questionable third party DRM practices on Steam.


Valve has complete loyalty and respect from me. Steam has made games accessible here in Brazil for a long while now, while the retail versions are heavily taxed I can get away with better prices and the seasonal sale bargain on Steam, not to mention their games are all good far as objective quality goes.

I like pretty much everything made by Telltale too, they've ressurected the adventure genre and even made it to various game of the year lists last year with Walking Dead, I think those guys are awesome for giving me more Monkey Island and the opportunity to play all those other classics they turned into adventure games like Sam and Max and Back to the future.

Lastly though I could care less about their current asian releases I love what Square did to the western developers they bought, without them we probably wouldn't have had Human Revolution, the awesome prequel to one of the best games ever made, the new Hitman, Sleeping Dogs and finally a decent Tomb Raider game. They also happen to do DLC right, the Deus Ex DLC was very cheap and had the right amount of content instead of the extremely overpriced shit we see around everytime where you pay 20 dollars for 1 hour of extra gameplay, advertised as 5 of course.

 

[MPerce]

Double Fine, because each and every game they put out is at the very least a unique experience. I love a studio that's constantly trying something new.

Valve, for all the reasons.

Rockstar, because even though I'm not a big GTA fan, I respect the amount of work and detail they put into every aspect of their products.

Supergiant Games. I know they've only done one game so far, but damn it, Bastion was incredible enough to earn my respect forever. I will immediately snatch up whatever game they come up with next.