Well, a developer is much different from a publisher, and let's not even begin to unravel the tangle of publishers who also develop. I really have a lot of respect for a developer who can self-publish, but that's obviously not feasible a lot of the time.
Let's go down the list, shall we?
Among publishers, Valve is doing a lot to open up the Internet. GameTap is doing the same, but GameTap is more like a retailer than a publisher.
Atlus goes out of its way to find the Japanese things that strike my brutish American sensibilities as "quirky," but they've got a sense of quality control about it - and bringing Ogre Battle 64 to the US is something for which I can't possibly thank them enough.
I like Capcom. Their in-house studios have the worst case of sequelitis I've ever seen, and in many ways they behave like a Japanese EA, and they killed Clover Studios, but they are always willing to take a risk with a new property (and then drive it into the ground). That degree of prolificacy is a net positive for the industry as a whole.
Moving on to developers, I must commend the worthy Toys For Bob, and specifically their founders Fred Ford and Paul Reich III, who not only made, and then released the source code for, the best game ever [http://sc2.sourceforge.net/], but also have borne their imprisonment deep within the bowels of Activision's sequel-and-license mines without losing their passion for, or ability to make, quality games.
Introversion has already been mentioned, but it bears repeating. Every single one of these guys' games has been a step forward for the medium, and they are a handful of guys in a basement. They keep the dream alive.
Blizzard, Bioware, and all of Nintendo's little sub-teams and first parties (EAD, R&D1, Hal, Intelligent Systems, Retro Studios) have thoroughly mastered the art of quality control, and they deserve the resultant spoils. Good games are better than bad ones.
Kojima Studios is delightfully mad.
Even though LucasArts really only makes Star Wars games these days, we mustn't forget the fact that the Star Wars games they make are generally good, nor all the fantastic original titles they brought us in the past.
Maxis may have been dissolved, but they are still with us in spirit. Some day Spore will have to come out. We'll be ready for it.
Stardock deserves all the kudos in the galaxy for daring to ship Galactic Civilizations 2 without any kind of copy protection. I probably would not have even noticed this fantastic game had they not made this decision.
How could I fail to mention The Dev Team [http://www.nethack.org/], famous for its ability to Think Of Everything, and also to work on a game continuously for over twenty years, for free?
Also, I know the guy who made Zeta's World [http://www.breadbros.com/Zeta/] so I suppose it'd be polite for me to be a shill for him.
