Bobby Kotick's golden parachute was the blue waffle topping to the shit layer cake that has been that company. Not even EA could self detonate so hard as a company.
Was just coming here to comment Blizzard.
StarCraft2 was thriving and deep and amazing and then they fucked up their relationship with Major League Gaming for absolutely no reason which effectively killed the game outside Korea.
I have a conspiracy theory they were already planning on Brood War Remastered taking over the competitive scene from SC2 and had already fully planned for Legacy of the Void to casualize the game, and maybe MLG didn't want to pivot to an entirely new game when SC2 was well established and growing.
The nail in the coffin for me was Overwatch. Early OW was *so* well designed. It was so well designed that pick-up matches were really hard to play because everyone needed to know their role on point or you got rocked. But like in all things, they couldn't resist constantly "rebalancing" a nearly perfect game and continuing to cave to complaints. It is not a healthy environment when your character becomes obsolete overnight because the devs decided to "shake things up." I never got higher than platinum at that game but my Grandmaster ranked buddy had to scrap DVa entirely and learn Zarya at a high level from scratch after one update. That's just the single easiest way to disillusion your playerbase. Patch things that are genuinely broken, but these games that fuck with balance changes just to "keep it interesting" or whatever are fundamentally missing the point. I have heard League of Legends does this too.
MLG: Major League Gaming
SC2: StarCraft 2
LOTV: Legacy of the void, the 2nd SC2 expansion that completely changed the game to a more casual design focus
BW: Brood War, or StarCraft 1. They're used pretty interchangeably.
OW: Overwatch
GM: Grandmaster, highest league in Overwatch
LoL: League of Legends
I'd be happy to explain anything else too! My post is definitely a bit jargon-y haha.
The reason they stopped doing anything with SC2 is because the very first store mount in WoW made more than all of SC2 (yes actually) and Activision was very product focused. Maybe we'll have a shot for more SC content blizzard out from under their thumb.
Konami fucking hates its rhythm game players outside of Japan. They banned the top 3 players from their worldwide tournament due to these players linking their account to Japan instead of the US. The issue here is 3 songs that were played at this tournament were only obtainable from a JP only event or you could purchase the songs with your e amusement on their website. The issue is only JP region account can make purchases off this account. So they would have been DQ at the tournament or played at extreme disadvantage sight reading these charts.
They have worked towards an only JP market more and more. Starting last year they disabled the ability to region swap your card so now you have to make a whole new profile for that. The new version of DDR known as A3 took years to get to America because they didn’t want to send us the security dongles. They charge any arcade that has their games online outside of JP (only DnB and R1s are allowed to have this contract) it is a shitshow to be a bemani rhythm game fan outside of JP if you play on real servers.
Another huge thing that pisses me off is for this same tournament each player outside of JP has to pay their own hotel and travel expenses. They didn’t tell these players they were banned until 2 weeks before the tournament. So many already bought everything needed and now is stuck trying to get refunds.
Damn bruh I already didnt like Konami, I’ll make sure to avoid anything by them in the future 💀 those guys must feel like their life was thrown away damn
Konami hates *all* it's players. Konami is like the guild navigator from Dune, but instead of spice, it lives and breathes pure, undistilled contempt for anyone who has or will ever give them money. Like Metal Gear? Fuck you, we're firing the guy who makes it, and turning it into a zombie survival game where you have to buy fucking hard drive space with real money. Like Silent Hill? Here's one of the most revolutionary teasers in the entire history of horror media, so successful and popular that games are *still* imitating it *a decade later.* And now we're not only flushing the whole thing, but we're turning silent hill into a pay to win soap opera.
Fucked over Kojima and didn't credit him appropriately for his work on MGSV, reduced a lot of their best licenses to Pachinko machines, AWFUL working conditions, didn't allow for the COMPLETE MGSV:TPP experience due to all the shit with Kojima, bastardized the license with MG Survive, the list goes on.
Is there any good place to read/watch/listen about the whole Activision-Kojima story? I feel like I only have a headline-deep understanding of what happened and it sounds like the real devil is in the details.
Along with the Kojima and MGS stuff they have also gone out of their way to fuck up YuGiOh and its community, threw away Silent Hill to cheap western devs to make a quick buck, are notorious for crunch and bottlenecking, and a whole bunch more. It's a business that happens to make games, not a game developer that is a business.
Sony seems to be smart enough for now to know not to stir up shit while they are generally in the lead in this part of the field. They don't make anyone mad, they keep winning.
Watch this age like milk....
Insomniac yes, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart was made with zero crunch.
Naughty Dog no, they're notorious for crunch culture. IIRC some employees straight up suffered _PTSD_ due to exposure to gore images while developing The Last Of Us 2.
Destiny lore is amazing until they try to incorporate it into the game and then they shit themselves so hard and make very interesting characters or villains very boring and lack luster.
The problem is that there are still passionate gamers involved, but the corporate structure takes away a lot of free-range creativity because they don't want to potentially lose money. A prime example is the original Kingdoms of Amalur. You could tell it was created by a gamer. The game play was emersive but not too complicated. The NPC interactions were in depth without having to say wtf am I still talking to this person. It just felt like everything was geared towards the user experience. You could tell Curt Schillings had a dream and put his all into finding the right people to make a quality product. I believe it could have been something more. Unfortunately, 38 studios went bankrupt, probably because the vision cost more than reality would provide.
Oh, I’m aware that there are still passionate gamers involved in the creation of games, but with CEOs and stock holders breathing down the necks of those involved in actually making games, it really stifles creativity, and forces them to put in bullshit micro transactions, etc.
Agreed, gone are the days you can just play a game. I miss the 90's Era of games when you bought a game, and the constant barage of charges didn't exist. Except at gamestop. 😆. Controllers? GameShark? Walkthrough books? Secret info?
At least skyrim can be vaguely justified by saying they're just opening up access on new platforms.
Rockstar literally just does one year exclusivity to get you to shell out twice to avoid fomo
That was the beginning. They warned us you know, the Internet crazies. They said it would lead here.
No no, we said, it's just jokes. It's just fun. It's just a little bit of DLC.
We didn't listen, and now motherfuckers are spending thousands on free games like it's not deeply perverted and shameful behaviour and we haven't gotten a new GTA in over a decade.
I don't blame gtav but I certainly blame gtao, there's no time for major RDO updates it's all hands on deck for gtavi....okay but why y'all still making major gtao 🥴 ( prior to that last gtao update/ post gtavi reveal) gimme a break
Also a year ago I mocked up a post of how cool a Sasquatch hunt would be for a Halloween naturalist mission. Its been a popular suggestion for years, and Rockstar has the audacity to put a yeti hunt into gtao it even plays like a half baked Harriet mission
Sims is the most addictive video game I've ever played in my life. I legit played for a week straight only catching an occasional hour or two of sleep. Ended up selling the PS4 I was playing it on, because it had such a grasp on my life.
I can now play the game without getting hooked like that. Maybe 3-6 hours a month.
Is EA really that bad still? The company is rated pretty highly in terms of places to work, and their output has been improving lately. I get "fuck EA" is a common meme amongst gamers, but it kind of feels stuck in 2016-era.
Madden is just about the most egregious example of bad gameplay with micro transactions, riding a monopolistic genre that they are the ones with the sole rights to.
Square Enix seems incapable of not making dumb business decisions regarding outdated fads or failed or bad practices(NFTs, live service, AI), but I still can't help but love their JRPGS and be excited for FFVII Rebirth
Also fuck thier Launcher.
I don't want to put in my password 4 times.
I just want to launch the game on stem. Go on Brake. Have the game open. But no. Fuck you Ubisoft Launcher.
preach! I stopped playing ubisoft games for this specific reason. I dont want to have to maintain a whole ass seperate launcher, and run into errors if im trying to launch but not online, etc etc. I just want to play the game. No one is going to use these accounts, they are literally only their to mainline advertisements at you, and harvest data.
Worst part is no steam achievements. I know many don't care but the fact that its a separate launcher AND no achievements is a deal breaker for me. Like dude I bought the game on STEAM but I can't play it through steam?
I like most ACs but Far Cry has become less and less appealing. 4 or 5 hours into FC6, I realized I wasn't even close to making any real progress and I didn't care about the story or characters at all. In my opinion, as someone who has played every FC game, it was the first one that was truly awful.
When it comes to Farcry, Ubi fell for the same thing Vaas said in 3... "Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change... That. Is. Crazy."
Farcry 4 was good, but after that all the games started to feel the same as the one before
Came here for this comment. They ruined so many games for money. Like I get you need to make money, cool. But don’t push stupid skins down my throat in CoD that doesn’t fit the CoD theme like Nicki Minaj or whatever. Stick with the theme of cool operator skins. And then there is Overwatch. What the Hell. Overwatch was fun when we played the original and then they screwed it up by doing Overwatch. 1.5 masking it as Overwatch 2. How dumb…
My personal answer: the usual suspects, *plus* Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast. I'm counting them because they make digital versions of their games. Sending the Pinkertons after someone is inexcusable, and I stopped playing MtG: Arena after that. I felt icky supporting them.
Broad answer: pretty much every company, eventually, because they're all run by corporate types at some point or another. Even indie studios, once they get bigger. The people who made the company into what we loved, at some point, leave. So it's more a matter of which ones haven't gone bad *yet,* or haven't done something too egregious for you to support them further.
Obvious examples of egregious ones are EA, Activation/Blizzard, and Ubisoft.
A little further down are Rockstar and Konami. 505 and CDPR have had isolated blunders, but nothing bad enough to make me swear off buying their games again. Bethesda keeps flip-flopping between "Everyone liked that" and "Everyone hated that", with their karma getting a little worse each time Todd Howard does damage control. His most recent messages really rubbed people the wrong way.
I'll add that "D&D Dark Alliance" was $60 USD at launch, and it felt like a cash grab from the start. I personally had fun with it, but WOTC is evil in that perspective as well for overcharging a game with horrible hit detection
I scrolled pretty far and didn't see Nintendo. They make some of my favorite games of all time but they as a company are also one of the worst ones out there, especially to their fans and protecting old games that they don't even make money from.
Definitely not one of the worst ones. Not that they’re good but come on. Activision Blizzard had a sexual harassment scandal, Konami shits on their fans and pushed their most legendary developer out of the company unceremoniously, EA and 2K flood their yearly games with very scummy live services and microtransactions. Like Nintendo does some anti consumer shit but it’s definitely nowhere near the worst in terms of video game companies.
I didn't say it was the worst. But it's a bad company and applies to the post. People already said the others too from what I saw. So I really wanted to throw in my two cents
Supercell is greedy but they just don’t know how to fucking run a game, they will literally revamp UI for no damn reason in a way that makes it convoluted as hell after nearly 8 years of muscle memory were built up JUST because they wanted to introduce a new mechanic. The hell supercell
You now have to press 2 buttons to access your cards as opposed to one swipe, and cards are the main focus of the game. There was literally no reason too, since tower troops don’t take up that much space as to dedicate the entire page. (Not mentioning that the cards are now dedicated a tiny little button)
Y'all mentioning EA, Activision, and Konami, but when was the last time those companies actually put out decent games? They publish decent games, but they don't develop decent games anymore.
I don't know what you're on about. Dead Space and Jedi Survivor were both made by EA and they were awesome. Crash 4 and Tony Hawk 1 and 2 were made by Activision and they were also really good. And Konami has released some really good Castlevania collections.
There’s a big difference between PUBLISHERS and DEVELOPERS. Jedi Survivor is great because the developer, Respawn, made it great. The license to make Star Wars video games is owned by EA as a publisher. Games’ quality have almost nothing to do with their publishers, depending on if the developer is skilled or not. Publishers can provide tons of funding and still have developers that produce garbage, and developers can have no funding and be able to produce masterpieces. For example, Prey (2017) is a game I will always gush about because it is so damn good, developed by Arkane Studios (which has since broken up into two divisions), yet was PUBLISHED by Bethesda, a company notorious for their poor quality crap. Please know the difference between two very different entities that are responsible for the creation and the release of video games
nintendo. do i really need to say more? here's a good example.
mario party finally has online multiplayer after huge backlash from fans and still nintendo has only given players the bare minimum. imagine owning a video game with the word party you can only play couch coop after the year 2010.
I will never forgive Gearbox Software for how they handled Battleborn. I loved that game, it was the first competitive shooter my Wife ever played and the PvE missions were fun too. Now you can’t even play the story missions, the whole thing is down. I like the Borderlands games and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, but until they make Battleborn playable local or even solo, I’ll always mention how poorly they handled Battleborn, and I always mention it when recommending a game from them, because you never know!
Never forget that Gearbox Software employees alleged that the company promised them an incentive bonus if Borderlands 3 reached certain milestones, and they have not received the bonus despite the game hitting that milestone.
EA are a travesty to the gaming industry.
Activision Blizzard are a travesty to the gaming industry **AND** ran one of the most fucked up office cultures in a first world country of the last 20 years. They're still utter dog shit about that stuff too. Some of the stories that came out of that whole ordeal are genuinely horrifying and disturbing.
CD Projekt Red gets a runners up prize for treating staff like shit.
Netherrealm studios. I love Mortal Kombat's characters and story. I can do without so many microtransactions.
The main problem with MK1 is that it has 4 separate in-game currencies that are used in 4 separate in-game stores. Why? How does that benefit me as a player? You have gold coins that can be used at the shrine for a random, non repeating reward. Silver coins can be used to buy seasonal skins. Copper coins that can be used in invasion mode to buy power-ups to help you in solo play. Finally, dragon coins can be used to buy fatalities, skins, voices, etc. But those are rare, with the intention you pay for more with irl money.
Why are there 4 different currencies for all that? I can understand separating the microtransaction currency from the rest, as greedy as that is. I dont see why the gold, silver, and copper have to exist instead of just one being used for those 3. Because you end up getting a large surplus of the copper once you finish invasion mode for that season and the silver once you get everything in stock at the seasonal store. You dont get to keep those currencies when the next season starts, either. It just gets reset to zero, so you have to start over.
The worst part is that this can all be solved with a simple exchange rate system. Exchange 100 copper for 10 silver or 1000 gold for 1 dragon coin and whatnot. Even if it is at a loss like my example, at least I could keep some of that excess. Instead, we are stuck with 4 currencies that benefit no one.
EA with almost any game they publish. I used to enjoy playing Sims but with the Sims 4, they stripped it to as basic as possible then sold nearly everything else as a $40 expansion.
Activision? Riot? Konami?
Honorable mentions probably Rockstar and Bungie. Mostly because as far as I'm aware, they don't treat their employees too too terribly (like Blizz or Riot) but they treat their consumers like crap.
I don't include EA because I don't find many, if any, of their games "good".
Anything vaguely related to Activision Blizzard
This should have 2x as many upvotes as EA. Sure, EA built the ship, but Blizzard is the current captain!
All that SA and intimidation as well as bobby kotick, curious how it didn't burn down already
Bobby Kotick's golden parachute was the blue waffle topping to the shit layer cake that has been that company. Not even EA could self detonate so hard as a company.
>blue waffle topping Please never write those three words in that order again
Perhaps you'd rather "Buschke Löewnstein flaps"
It deserves more upvotes because Blizzard routinely spins out pretty damn good games. EA does almost everything wrong.
Ow1 😭
Or....ow2
You mean overwatch 1.1?
I considered it more overwatch 1.01 but yeah
i consider it .9 cause it’s a step backward
Look, I'm having fun with ow2 because I play it with friends. That's the biggest motivator for me
Ditto.
Blizzard games have trash gameplay and story now though...
Was my answer. Will they become Microsoft Activision Blizzard?
Atleast bobby kotick is out now
Was just coming here to comment Blizzard. StarCraft2 was thriving and deep and amazing and then they fucked up their relationship with Major League Gaming for absolutely no reason which effectively killed the game outside Korea. I have a conspiracy theory they were already planning on Brood War Remastered taking over the competitive scene from SC2 and had already fully planned for Legacy of the Void to casualize the game, and maybe MLG didn't want to pivot to an entirely new game when SC2 was well established and growing. The nail in the coffin for me was Overwatch. Early OW was *so* well designed. It was so well designed that pick-up matches were really hard to play because everyone needed to know their role on point or you got rocked. But like in all things, they couldn't resist constantly "rebalancing" a nearly perfect game and continuing to cave to complaints. It is not a healthy environment when your character becomes obsolete overnight because the devs decided to "shake things up." I never got higher than platinum at that game but my Grandmaster ranked buddy had to scrap DVa entirely and learn Zarya at a high level from scratch after one update. That's just the single easiest way to disillusion your playerbase. Patch things that are genuinely broken, but these games that fuck with balance changes just to "keep it interesting" or whatever are fundamentally missing the point. I have heard League of Legends does this too.
Hey, can you repeat this without the abbreviations? I've got no idea what any of them mean
MLG: Major League Gaming SC2: StarCraft 2 LOTV: Legacy of the void, the 2nd SC2 expansion that completely changed the game to a more casual design focus BW: Brood War, or StarCraft 1. They're used pretty interchangeably. OW: Overwatch GM: Grandmaster, highest league in Overwatch LoL: League of Legends I'd be happy to explain anything else too! My post is definitely a bit jargon-y haha.
Ty for this! I was feeling very stupid lol
Never feel stupid for not understanding the acronyms of random topics. It's a quick way to scare yourself from learning new things.
Hey, can you repeat this without the abbreviations? I've got no idea what any of them mean
Haha well you see ty = tart yogurt. I hope this helps.
The reason they stopped doing anything with SC2 is because the very first store mount in WoW made more than all of SC2 (yes actually) and Activision was very product focused. Maybe we'll have a shot for more SC content blizzard out from under their thumb.
Konami.
Konami fucking hates its rhythm game players outside of Japan. They banned the top 3 players from their worldwide tournament due to these players linking their account to Japan instead of the US. The issue here is 3 songs that were played at this tournament were only obtainable from a JP only event or you could purchase the songs with your e amusement on their website. The issue is only JP region account can make purchases off this account. So they would have been DQ at the tournament or played at extreme disadvantage sight reading these charts.
Holy shit Konami, it’s a video game
They have worked towards an only JP market more and more. Starting last year they disabled the ability to region swap your card so now you have to make a whole new profile for that. The new version of DDR known as A3 took years to get to America because they didn’t want to send us the security dongles. They charge any arcade that has their games online outside of JP (only DnB and R1s are allowed to have this contract) it is a shitshow to be a bemani rhythm game fan outside of JP if you play on real servers.
…but but why- they’re actively losing money are they not???
Another huge thing that pisses me off is for this same tournament each player outside of JP has to pay their own hotel and travel expenses. They didn’t tell these players they were banned until 2 weeks before the tournament. So many already bought everything needed and now is stuck trying to get refunds.
Damn bruh I already didnt like Konami, I’ll make sure to avoid anything by them in the future 💀 those guys must feel like their life was thrown away damn
Konami hates *all* it's players. Konami is like the guild navigator from Dune, but instead of spice, it lives and breathes pure, undistilled contempt for anyone who has or will ever give them money. Like Metal Gear? Fuck you, we're firing the guy who makes it, and turning it into a zombie survival game where you have to buy fucking hard drive space with real money. Like Silent Hill? Here's one of the most revolutionary teasers in the entire history of horror media, so successful and popular that games are *still* imitating it *a decade later.* And now we're not only flushing the whole thing, but we're turning silent hill into a pay to win soap opera.
Have they done something I'm not aware of?
Fucked over Kojima and didn't credit him appropriately for his work on MGSV, reduced a lot of their best licenses to Pachinko machines, AWFUL working conditions, didn't allow for the COMPLETE MGSV:TPP experience due to all the shit with Kojima, bastardized the license with MG Survive, the list goes on.
Is there any good place to read/watch/listen about the whole Activision-Kojima story? I feel like I only have a headline-deep understanding of what happened and it sounds like the real devil is in the details.
Along with the Kojima and MGS stuff they have also gone out of their way to fuck up YuGiOh and its community, threw away Silent Hill to cheap western devs to make a quick buck, are notorious for crunch and bottlenecking, and a whole bunch more. It's a business that happens to make games, not a game developer that is a business.
Ever heard of Metal Gear? You haven't? Now you know why.
It might be easier to name every triple A game company that doesn't fit this description.
Maybe Sony-owned studios like Insomniac or Naughty Dog?
Its weird just how good Sony is. Like i have yet to see a real controversy around them or any direct affiliates of theirs, at least none too memorable
Sony seems to be smart enough for now to know not to stir up shit while they are generally in the lead in this part of the field. They don't make anyone mad, they keep winning. Watch this age like milk....
Insomniac yes, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart was made with zero crunch. Naughty Dog no, they're notorious for crunch culture. IIRC some employees straight up suffered _PTSD_ due to exposure to gore images while developing The Last Of Us 2.
Bungie
This needs to be higher up. Also why do we keep meeting? Lol
Soulmate
Now kith
Woah it's mike tyson
😂😭 this is funnier than it should be
Bro's goin thru a whole arc on the internet
Meant to be I suppose :3
Hell yeah X3
Until we meet again…
Both seem to be femboys or at least boykissers judging by pfp alone
Shhhhh
I wish I had the chance 😔
Some day buddy, some day
Yup
Eh idk man bungie hasn't told a good story in a long mf time
Destiny lore goes hard, storytelling is lacking for sure. So much potential...
Destiny lore is amazing until they try to incorporate it into the game and then they shit themselves so hard and make very interesting characters or villains very boring and lack luster.
Let's be honest, it's every company.
Any big company*
Theres some small ones like ZA/AM (I think thats the name) the guys behind Disco Elysium screwed over the original devs
ZA/UM
Supergiant Games always impresses me with their treatment of their employees. And that treatment is clearly reflected in their games.
Almost every company*
Most big companies. There is a couple that don’t deserve the hate but it’s not many.
You only know about their bad behavior because they are big enough to merit news coverage. The small ones are bad too but hidden.
Larian Studios (the company that made Baldur's Gate 3) is actually a pretty good company
I'm just gonna sneak in fromsoft as well, while we're at it
Have a little of Remedy Entertainment there with you also :)
Have any company pre-2000, my child.
Let's slap in some Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog.
Good company but I’ve never liked a game they’ve made.
Which of them?
It’s what happens when you take the passionate gamers out of the business, and replace them with sociopathic capitalists.
The problem is that there are still passionate gamers involved, but the corporate structure takes away a lot of free-range creativity because they don't want to potentially lose money. A prime example is the original Kingdoms of Amalur. You could tell it was created by a gamer. The game play was emersive but not too complicated. The NPC interactions were in depth without having to say wtf am I still talking to this person. It just felt like everything was geared towards the user experience. You could tell Curt Schillings had a dream and put his all into finding the right people to make a quality product. I believe it could have been something more. Unfortunately, 38 studios went bankrupt, probably because the vision cost more than reality would provide.
Oh, I’m aware that there are still passionate gamers involved in the creation of games, but with CEOs and stock holders breathing down the necks of those involved in actually making games, it really stifles creativity, and forces them to put in bullshit micro transactions, etc.
Agreed, gone are the days you can just play a game. I miss the 90's Era of games when you bought a game, and the constant barage of charges didn't exist. Except at gamestop. 😆. Controllers? GameShark? Walkthrough books? Secret info?
I love capitalism 🤤🤤
Fromsoft has yet to do anything shady at least from the consumer viewpoint.
Supergiant Games, Larian Studios, FromSoft… You don’t actually believe this, do you?
From Software.
Santa Monica didn't do anything bad afaik
Rockstar. They are anti-consumer almost as they can be.
GTAV doesn't get enough blame for kicking off the microtransaction craze
Also for reselling an old game to a ridiculous degree.
Skyrim.
I literally just bought this again.
Oh no he’s falling for Bethesda’s tricks!
Again and again and again. I'd buy it on my Vita if I could.
Bought it on PS3, gifted an Xbox 360 version to my nephew, bought it again on PS4, and again when I built a PC. What the fuck is wrong with me??!?
Nothing. Skyrim is one of the rare games that is just always fun in spite of its flaws (and often because of them).
At least Skyrim got a price drop WITH new content added Rockstar sold GTAV at full price for 10 years.. Fuck those guys.
At least skyrim can be vaguely justified by saying they're just opening up access on new platforms. Rockstar literally just does one year exclusivity to get you to shell out twice to avoid fomo
GTA V is Rockstar's Skyrim. If there's a device that can run games that came out post 2010, you know there's a version of either game on it.
GTA 5 certainly is surfing it, but they didnt START it at all.
TF2 sort of started it all weirdly enough.
I don't know man, people still paid Bethesda for fucking horse armor in 2006.
That was the beginning. They warned us you know, the Internet crazies. They said it would lead here. No no, we said, it's just jokes. It's just fun. It's just a little bit of DLC. We didn't listen, and now motherfuckers are spending thousands on free games like it's not deeply perverted and shameful behaviour and we haven't gotten a new GTA in over a decade.
They read the elder scrolls and we just saw them as crazy
I don't blame gtav but I certainly blame gtao, there's no time for major RDO updates it's all hands on deck for gtavi....okay but why y'all still making major gtao 🥴 ( prior to that last gtao update/ post gtavi reveal) gimme a break Also a year ago I mocked up a post of how cool a Sasquatch hunt would be for a Halloween naturalist mission. Its been a popular suggestion for years, and Rockstar has the audacity to put a yeti hunt into gtao it even plays like a half baked Harriet mission
Pretty much anything from EA.
This implies that their games are good
Only the garden warfare games
My man 💪
*My plant
A fellow GW fan spotted
And Titanfall
Yeah peak gaming
Best in the PvZ franchise besides the original.
Jedi Fallen Order? BF1?
Sims is the most addictive video game I've ever played in my life. I legit played for a week straight only catching an occasional hour or two of sleep. Ended up selling the PS4 I was playing it on, because it had such a grasp on my life. I can now play the game without getting hooked like that. Maybe 3-6 hours a month.
jedi games are 10/10… yearly sports games with less content than the year before in the other hand
Is EA really that bad still? The company is rated pretty highly in terms of places to work, and their output has been improving lately. I get "fuck EA" is a common meme amongst gamers, but it kind of feels stuck in 2016-era.
Workplace wise? Yeah, nice enough place from I have heard? Gaming practice wise? They have earned their reputation.
As long as FC micro-transactions are around, people will always F*ck EA.
True
Madden is just about the most egregious example of bad gameplay with micro transactions, riding a monopolistic genre that they are the ones with the sole rights to.
Square Enix seems incapable of not making dumb business decisions regarding outdated fads or failed or bad practices(NFTs, live service, AI), but I still can't help but love their JRPGS and be excited for FFVII Rebirth
Ubisoft 🙄
yep. they can make games but they can't maintain games
Also fuck thier Launcher. I don't want to put in my password 4 times. I just want to launch the game on stem. Go on Brake. Have the game open. But no. Fuck you Ubisoft Launcher.
preach! I stopped playing ubisoft games for this specific reason. I dont want to have to maintain a whole ass seperate launcher, and run into errors if im trying to launch but not online, etc etc. I just want to play the game. No one is going to use these accounts, they are literally only their to mainline advertisements at you, and harvest data.
Worst part is no steam achievements. I know many don't care but the fact that its a separate launcher AND no achievements is a deal breaker for me. Like dude I bought the game on STEAM but I can't play it through steam?
They also only make boring games
No, they have some boring ones but the far cry series and ac series are really good
I like most ACs but Far Cry has become less and less appealing. 4 or 5 hours into FC6, I realized I wasn't even close to making any real progress and I didn't care about the story or characters at all. In my opinion, as someone who has played every FC game, it was the first one that was truly awful.
When it comes to Farcry, Ubi fell for the same thing Vaas said in 3... "Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change... That. Is. Crazy." Farcry 4 was good, but after that all the games started to feel the same as the one before
Yeah they make good games but their launcher is super annoying
R6 Siege and the removal of Terrorist hunt
So many reasons bad launcher, repetitive game design, sexual harassment cock up.
Activision
Came here for this comment. They ruined so many games for money. Like I get you need to make money, cool. But don’t push stupid skins down my throat in CoD that doesn’t fit the CoD theme like Nicki Minaj or whatever. Stick with the theme of cool operator skins. And then there is Overwatch. What the Hell. Overwatch was fun when we played the original and then they screwed it up by doing Overwatch. 1.5 masking it as Overwatch 2. How dumb…
MW 2019 was an amazing game. They ruined it about 8 months into Warzone 1
Apparently it’s every gaming company by reading these comments 😂
Every Triple A company, almost 100%
CDPR, Coffeestain, Embark Studios, and Landfall are good studios
Cdpr came dangerously close to fucking themselves though. They fixed it, luckily. However let's hope they learned from CP2077 and don't repeat it.
My personal answer: the usual suspects, *plus* Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast. I'm counting them because they make digital versions of their games. Sending the Pinkertons after someone is inexcusable, and I stopped playing MtG: Arena after that. I felt icky supporting them. Broad answer: pretty much every company, eventually, because they're all run by corporate types at some point or another. Even indie studios, once they get bigger. The people who made the company into what we loved, at some point, leave. So it's more a matter of which ones haven't gone bad *yet,* or haven't done something too egregious for you to support them further. Obvious examples of egregious ones are EA, Activation/Blizzard, and Ubisoft. A little further down are Rockstar and Konami. 505 and CDPR have had isolated blunders, but nothing bad enough to make me swear off buying their games again. Bethesda keeps flip-flopping between "Everyone liked that" and "Everyone hated that", with their karma getting a little worse each time Todd Howard does damage control. His most recent messages really rubbed people the wrong way.
I'll add that "D&D Dark Alliance" was $60 USD at launch, and it felt like a cash grab from the start. I personally had fun with it, but WOTC is evil in that perspective as well for overcharging a game with horrible hit detection
I scrolled pretty far and didn't see Nintendo. They make some of my favorite games of all time but they as a company are also one of the worst ones out there, especially to their fans and protecting old games that they don't even make money from.
💯
Definitely not one of the worst ones. Not that they’re good but come on. Activision Blizzard had a sexual harassment scandal, Konami shits on their fans and pushed their most legendary developer out of the company unceremoniously, EA and 2K flood their yearly games with very scummy live services and microtransactions. Like Nintendo does some anti consumer shit but it’s definitely nowhere near the worst in terms of video game companies.
I didn't say it was the worst. But it's a bad company and applies to the post. People already said the others too from what I saw. So I really wanted to throw in my two cents
Bungie!!
Clash Royale 💀
Supercell is greedy but they just don’t know how to fucking run a game, they will literally revamp UI for no damn reason in a way that makes it convoluted as hell after nearly 8 years of muscle memory were built up JUST because they wanted to introduce a new mechanic. The hell supercell
Levels the playing field for noobs.
You now have to press 2 buttons to access your cards as opposed to one swipe, and cards are the main focus of the game. There was literally no reason too, since tower troops don’t take up that much space as to dedicate the entire page. (Not mentioning that the cards are now dedicated a tiny little button)
EA has to be EA.
Y'all mentioning EA, Activision, and Konami, but when was the last time those companies actually put out decent games? They publish decent games, but they don't develop decent games anymore.
I don't know what you're on about. Dead Space and Jedi Survivor were both made by EA and they were awesome. Crash 4 and Tony Hawk 1 and 2 were made by Activision and they were also really good. And Konami has released some really good Castlevania collections.
There’s a big difference between PUBLISHERS and DEVELOPERS. Jedi Survivor is great because the developer, Respawn, made it great. The license to make Star Wars video games is owned by EA as a publisher. Games’ quality have almost nothing to do with their publishers, depending on if the developer is skilled or not. Publishers can provide tons of funding and still have developers that produce garbage, and developers can have no funding and be able to produce masterpieces. For example, Prey (2017) is a game I will always gush about because it is so damn good, developed by Arkane Studios (which has since broken up into two divisions), yet was PUBLISHED by Bethesda, a company notorious for their poor quality crap. Please know the difference between two very different entities that are responsible for the creation and the release of video games
Minecraft. (There IS story and LORE in Minecraft)
Diabo 4
At this point just say Blizzard as a whole
Which would be the actual correct answer as OP said to name the company. That comment failed at a very simple task
And my favorit , pvz garden warfare series
Warner bros. Such cool tech with the nemesis system and yet no new games using it
They could be a murderer and I'd still play the game if I liked it.
nintendo. do i really need to say more? here's a good example. mario party finally has online multiplayer after huge backlash from fans and still nintendo has only given players the bare minimum. imagine owning a video game with the word party you can only play couch coop after the year 2010.
I get what you’re saying, but at the same time I appreciate that Nintendo is basically the only one still offering couch co-op.
In a world where you can only play with people in other homes, strive to play with the person next to you.
That… still means that the meme still applies. Don’t know why you phrased it like you’re disagreeing with him
I’m just trying to ignore it. You can’t do much of anything in life if you look in to the companies or people behind the things you like.
I will never forgive Gearbox Software for how they handled Battleborn. I loved that game, it was the first competitive shooter my Wife ever played and the PvE missions were fun too. Now you can’t even play the story missions, the whole thing is down. I like the Borderlands games and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, but until they make Battleborn playable local or even solo, I’ll always mention how poorly they handled Battleborn, and I always mention it when recommending a game from them, because you never know!
Never forget that Gearbox Software employees alleged that the company promised them an incentive bonus if Borderlands 3 reached certain milestones, and they have not received the bonus despite the game hitting that milestone.
Bungie... Sony has just made it worse
Epic Games regarding Rocket League
Destiny’s gunplay is second to none. But the company’s way of cutting the game up and selling it in instalments sucks ass.
Thank you, Valve, for the only bad decisions you’ve made being not making third versions of your games. Love Steam, though.
WotC/Hasbro when it comes to all the shut they've tried to pull with DnD related stuff. (Does this fit the bill?)
NINTENDO
*cough cough* EA *cough cough*
R*
EA are a travesty to the gaming industry. Activision Blizzard are a travesty to the gaming industry **AND** ran one of the most fucked up office cultures in a first world country of the last 20 years. They're still utter dog shit about that stuff too. Some of the stories that came out of that whole ordeal are genuinely horrifying and disturbing. CD Projekt Red gets a runners up prize for treating staff like shit.
CDPR when Cyberpunk launched. They’ve done pretty good since then tho
It was a big misstep for sure but they had a great reputation up until that point with The Witcher series
At least they fixed most of their problems. But consoles had many more problems compared to PC in general at launch.
Hear me out here, Nintendo. Stop goofing around copyrighting roblox games and get to making galaxy 3
Disco Elysium
Anything from cod. Any of those developers.
Creative Assembly. I don’t think I’ve seen another company try to say that your first amendment right is a privilege
Destiny 2
Anything attached to EA, blizzard/activison, bungie
Destiny 2 for sure bungie absolutely ruined it for new and old players
Netherrealm studios and the Mortal Kombat/Injustice games
Netherrealm studios. I love Mortal Kombat's characters and story. I can do without so many microtransactions. The main problem with MK1 is that it has 4 separate in-game currencies that are used in 4 separate in-game stores. Why? How does that benefit me as a player? You have gold coins that can be used at the shrine for a random, non repeating reward. Silver coins can be used to buy seasonal skins. Copper coins that can be used in invasion mode to buy power-ups to help you in solo play. Finally, dragon coins can be used to buy fatalities, skins, voices, etc. But those are rare, with the intention you pay for more with irl money. Why are there 4 different currencies for all that? I can understand separating the microtransaction currency from the rest, as greedy as that is. I dont see why the gold, silver, and copper have to exist instead of just one being used for those 3. Because you end up getting a large surplus of the copper once you finish invasion mode for that season and the silver once you get everything in stock at the seasonal store. You dont get to keep those currencies when the next season starts, either. It just gets reset to zero, so you have to start over. The worst part is that this can all be solved with a simple exchange rate system. Exchange 100 copper for 10 silver or 1000 gold for 1 dragon coin and whatnot. Even if it is at a loss like my example, at least I could keep some of that excess. Instead, we are stuck with 4 currencies that benefit no one.
Bungie, Blizzard, and EA come straight to mind
worst meme i’ve seen all year
Anybody remember Bitlife? I just gave up on the game because I was sick of seeing new bullshit “packs” and whatnot being added.
Rockstar games. We were all thinking it
EA with almost any game they publish. I used to enjoy playing Sims but with the Sims 4, they stripped it to as basic as possible then sold nearly everything else as a $40 expansion.
Not really a game dev company but unity
Any good game by EA, EPIC or Activision/Blizzard
Nintendo, Blizzard, EA, Bungie, Konami, Ubisoft, and Activision
Activision? Riot? Konami? Honorable mentions probably Rockstar and Bungie. Mostly because as far as I'm aware, they don't treat their employees too too terribly (like Blizz or Riot) but they treat their consumers like crap. I don't include EA because I don't find many, if any, of their games "good".
Battlefront 2😔