What is the worst game development studio?

[cyrad]

It depends on the criteria for a "bad" game development company.

If it means which company is most evil, then it's EA Games. If it's incompetence, I'd say 3d Realms considering they were so incompetent that they got sued for it.

If it's how much a company fails at sustaining their own franchise, then it's Sonic Team, because the best Sonic games in the past 7 years were NOT made by Sonic Team.


Sonic Team has a special place in the dark side of my heart because of how much they keep claiming to revive the franchise only to not only fail, but also REFUSE to listen to their fans. All fans want is a decent Sonic the Hedgehog game, but instead, they get games where you spend more time playing as other characters other than Sonic the Hedgehog (note how I say Sonic the HEDGEHOG).

 

[SimuLord]

For pure, unadulterated incompetence you can't beat 3D Realms. They didn't make a BAD Duke Nukem Forever. They couldn't even do that WELL. I give the makers of Big Rigs a pass because they were basically Soviet slave labor working on a US$15,000 budget.

 

[atomictoast]

Sonic Team in everything after Sonic Adventure 2.

 

[Pegghead]

SOUTHPEAK INTERACTIVE! They're the leeches of the games industry, kind of like how Asyllum is the leech of the film industry.

 

[Hollock]

Sonic Team sh!tty game after Sh!tty game why do they even brother

I agree at least after a few years most people gave up on DNF but sonic is teasing us with project needle mouse potentially being done by non retards

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

South Peak. All their games are a copy of other games, and not even good ones at that.
I think their a publisher though...
Edit: I have been ninja'd!

 

[dudeman0001]

Me, it's like I don't even know how to design a game!

 

[Citrus]

South Peak definitely isn't the worst game development studio out there, but I'm going to say they are for this thread. There are tons of crappy developers out there for which there is no hope, but South Peak actually looks like they have the potential and budget to make a decent game, but they screw it up every damn time.

 

[Flying-Emu]

Activision

Activision is a publisher, not a developer.

 

[Magic Muffin Man]

...Whoever made Counter-Strike needs to rot...

You do understand that Counter Strike was made by Valve, makers of fine games like Half Life and Portal, right? Although I do agree Counter Strike isn't quite as good as Team Fortress.

On topic, I'll go ahead and say Neversoft, who only know how to make Tony Hawk, and when that stopped making money, they tried to make Guitar Hero, which turned out horribly.

 

[HT_Black]

Funcom. I think you know why.

(Anarchy Online, some other stuff I don't really care about...Just Wiki it already.)

 

[o_O]

For the guy who said that the creators of Counter-Strike are the worst, I'd like to remind him that they apparently have a stunning record of making good games like, say, the Half-Life franchise, Portal, TF2, L4D, and other assorted Source games.

Yes, Valve made Counter-Strike as a mod to their Half-Life engine. [Ninja'd in the face on this front. x_X]


For those who consider that Silicon Knights are the worst should consider that they made Eternal Darkness. It's just that they fear money and success, so they made Too Human and not ED2. Oh, know that I've never played Too Human, so I cannot know how bad it sucks; just that it couldn't possibly eliminate the shining star that is Eternal Darkness... Right?


OT:
My argument for redeeming Silicon Knights kinda makes me a hypocrite for who I hate, but whatever.

I despise Bethesda. Just for Fallout 3. I'll never buy another one of their games again if I can help it.

They apparently haven't heard of beta testing, or testing in general. I wonder if they even have alpha or just skip to launch if it works on one of the dev's rigs. From what I read online during my ordeal, I'm thinking it's the latter. It's not like I'm using little known manufacturers for my compy's components (Asus, Intel, nVidia). -_-

The only reason I stuck with trying to make the game work AT ALL was 'cuz I spent $50 on it over Steam (took an age to download; I was not gonna let that anticipation be for nothing!). I had to rollback all kinds of drivers, patch up all kinds of crap, and even then it BSOD's or CTD's now and again. And that's just catastrophic failure. Doesn't help how there are game-breaking bugs in it that make quests impossible or what-not. Half the time I have to use the console to continue. Then there's the DLC debacles...

I hear it's like this for their other games too, but I wouldn't know; I haven't done any looking in on them. I don't really want to. Going through it once is fine by me.

Sure, the game is one of the best I have played and all (seriously, at the time of this posting, Steam says I have logged 100+ hours... And rising [yes, I have no life currently]), but the horror I had to go through to make it work... I could never recommend it to anyone despite how much fun it is if you can force it to work. Maybe I was just unlucky though. And if God personally hated me.

The only shining star I have for them is that they at least have fixed some of them over time. That is immediately revoked when you consider that this crap shouldn't happen in the first place.


...Sorry for all the surplus bile. I just wanted to be thorough. >_>

 

[The_ModeRazor]

I'm not sure, usually most have a few good (or at least playable) games along with their shitty ones.
But EA... it's not that they make bad games (not always, anyways), but they are FUCK*N EVIL.

 

[Fraught]

The dudes who were working on Duke Nukem Forever.

Damn, that was the first thing that popped into my head too when I saw the name of the thread.

They are the worst developers. They don't make bad games, per se, but they don't just do their job.

 

[Valentine82]

After "The Guild 2: Venice" I'm tempted to say JoWood, but JoWood kind of got shafted on that and they made it right. I don't really know there are a lot of horrible companies.

 

[Iskenator67]

The dudes who were working on Duke Nukem Forever.

3D Realms? Agreed.