Are there good gaming companies anymore?

[ONCHEhap]

Honestly I really wouldn't call CDPR bad.

Sure,they fucked up with cyberpunk and I don't like the fact that they went public,but they still maintain GOG,which is a huge deal to me.

As for others,well I really don't see much good in AAA gaming,but one I could definitely name as good is Id Software

[Morae]

If the "good gaming company" in this context is one you can trust, there are very few I know.

Atm, Larian has yet to do anything bad. Baldur's gate 3 is openly available to those who want to see it and watch it progress. If this go bad, they will know it. There is no review fuckery possible for the time being. Etc.

CDPR ... welllll ... I have yet to try cyberpunk myself. Knew it was a good idea to wait a bit. They are still in the companies I kind of... trust. If thats the word. Sure as hell fell down in my personal ratings quite a bit, but they were so high that I will need another example of their work or how they deal with everything. Yet, they too are now at the point that I will surely wait for release and reviews of anything they put out. They are never going back up.

AAA companies are nearly all in the "doubt" list and some even on the outright reject list no matter what they release simply as matter of principle.


In fact, I tend to look at good indie games mostly these days. Some fresh ideas there. I don't need hyper hyper XXXEXTREME graphics and such. I just want a good game.

[Jastall]

Game companies are companies, they're not my friends. I don't require them to be the hippest and coolest thing or have impeccable ethical standards or whatever, just to have a minimally consumer-friendly approach and, most importantly, make good games. Plenty of devs make good games I enjoy, like Id, Supergiant, Obsidian, Creative Assembly, Blizzard (ya, sue me), so on and so forth.

For one thing some people losing this ridiculous illusion that CDPR are this bastion of perfect people who make perfect games while smelling amazing may just be a good lesson. Put nothing and nobody on a pedestal, folks. We're all still human.

[deenman]

Crate Entertainment is pretty good and Techland has been a gem with their dying light support years after the game released and with a sequel upcoming

[Yunru]

The only game company i trust 100% right now is Image & Form as they are small studio. Medium trust goes into Egosoft wich are also a small company (but have a bad habbit of getting games out to soon, but they fix them at end).

From what i seen, the smaller they are the more trustworty they are.

[Lord Pebbleton]

From Software is the only one that comes to mind. But then again, they approved the release of the abominable Dark Souls remaster, so idk anymore.

[Aliven]

IMHO Pretty much every company is what random forum goers understand as "greedy".

Take this moral compass into your daily life to only buy products from "good" companies and you are starved, homeless and dead within a year.

But I am always ready to be persuaded, how people here live their ethics that they hold game companies to in their daily life. How they don't own anything from Apple, Microsoft, never order from Amazon etc etc...

Its quite simple if you dont live in US actually.

Never buyed apple product, never ordered anything from Amazon, use free version of windows 10.

Would also never buy anything Nestle related or CDPR or Ubi for that matter. Yes, ethics do matter. We are not talking about things that are need to survive but luxury goods which are non essentials.

[Aliven]

Yeah, I avoid Nestle like the plaque. I do have a (refurbished) iPhone which was gifted to me. But no matter if I didn't...it is not like Samsung, Zalando et al are any "better" than Amazon or Apple. At least it is easy enough for me these days to avoid McDonalds and all that fastfood shit, including Coca Cola etc.

If you skip Amazon streaming...well..not like Disney is angelic. The folks behind youtube or Google aren't either....which is why I say that you pretty much only can chose lesser evils.

Oh yeah...and in the case of Nestly...we might just end up buying something from them because we ordered from a company that is part of their conglomerate and we didn't know :/

Yes, but there is difference between giving money which happens to go to nestle because we didnt know that would happen, and willfully buying their products.

[Fencers]

A company can release a lackluster game and not be villains for it. No reason to think CDPR are "not good" because Cyberpunk 2077 was developed and launched poorly by most accounts.

Do you really think Konami, Treasure, Capcom, Platinum, Squaresoft, Blizzard, Westwood, Black Isle, Sierra, Looking Glass, etc- were turning out nothing but flawless and well-loved masterpieces every time out? Any company can have hits and misses as the current state of some of the aforementioned and once "untouchable" developers would indicate.

Making video games is hard and it takes a lot of time and money. More than audiences sometimes realize in all three aspects. It's kind of a 'miracle' to even get an average game out of a development cycle.

It's no different than film production; hundreds & hundreds of new films are made each year. A lot of work goes into nearly all of these films from the 0-star Monster Hunter to 5 star Lover's Rock. Guess what? For the most part, none of the people working on a film have a definite sense of how it's all gonna turn out in the end.

The business of making artistic work for consumption is hard.

[minkage]

I still think Blizzard is a fantastic company

Nintendo, Super Giant Games, Yacht Club Games, Retro Studios and ID Software

[Hellobolis]

it's simple. all companies fall victim to corporatism when they are successful and grow, even if they actively try to avoid it. it's mostly a function of amount of employees, at some point theres to many and you simply need more management layers to function and thats when it starts, even if the board isn't aiming for a IPO or buyout or what have you.

[CastletonSnob]

Corporations aren't your friend.

[Hellobolis]

From Software is the only one that comes to mind. But then again, they approved the release of the abominable Dark Souls remaster, so idk anymore.

pretty sure they got some of that exploitative wages stuff going on in japan too. and i've never heard they are an exception to the insane work ethic there either.

[Nnyco]

Hahahaha Squeenix... wait youre serious HAHAHHA. Next youll probably gonna say nintendo lul.

[FakePizza]

What is a "good" company? Do you need to see their ethics before you buy their games? Isn't a "good game" enough for you these days?

There must be good games out there still? Right?

well for me good company would be,making decent game that isnt filled with ingame shops/season passes but since so many are doing that.All companies are pretty much trash like their games.So much content locked AFTER you buy the game.

[DesoPL]

You serious? Nintendo? Good joke...

[Queen of Hamsters]

I've had shitty experiences with small indie game companies, as well as big ones.

Then again, I don't need game developers and publishers to be saints or fulfill hipster qualities in order to enjoy their games.

[OokOok]

Bioware is still pretty solid.
Swtor would probably be the best casual MMO on the market with the best story and replay value if they still got the funding they once did. But considering that they're still pumping out content. Unlike Blizzard they actually communicate with the players daily

Square enix, their games have kind of gone down sadly. I was excited for FFVIIR but of course they had to start touching things because "Ethics" if they could leave it alone and just remaster a game they'd be golden. They'd make bank remastering all their old FF games.
They also still have solid MMO's out, ffxiv does well considering it's funding. FFXI still exists and had a steady population. I put a GM ticket in and a GM instantly hit me up I couldn't believe it. I've played WoW since beta and I can't remember the last time a GM actually personally contacted me, usually 3 days later I get an email.

[Azerate]

There are no good and bad companies. They are all profit driven entities, and they will try to do whatever makes the most money that will at the same time be accepted by the customers. Often they go too far with it, and then the big backlash happens, so they backpeddle a bit to the current acceptable state.

Never "trust a company". You can trust your friends, or your lover, or your family. Company delivers a product, if it meets your expectation good. If not, you move on. In extreme cases you request a refund and that's that. If you enjoy Corn Flakes, do you also mean to say you "trust Nestle"? No, obviously not. It sounds completely bonkers. So don't do that with video games, which is the exact same type of relationship. Treating people who sell you shit as your friends will never end well.

CD Projekt was never good. Stories of exploitative behavior, crunch and general asshattery about them were flying around for years now. They basically made one good game (Witcher 3). It had no MTX because in Poland we are pretty backwards so they probably had no idea they could even add something like that and it also didn't have black people in it, because it was based on stories set in quasi-slavic country of old. Of course the game itself was good, but both these additional things made them gods among the typical "gamers". They were sharp enough to notice that and did their best to try to ride that wave. "Gamer creed" only gets you so far though, especially if you go too far with your greed and release a botched game.

Honestly, I think the stories about work conditions in CDPR aren't as available on-line as many other issues discussed on youtube etc. because it's not a US based company so the access to this information is pretty hard. The reality is probably much more grim than most people think. Ubisoft, Activision, Riot, EA get a lot of shit for underpaying workers and firing them despite the company doing good. You wouldn't believe what the wages are in Poland, and how many hours these people probably work for basically almost nothing. A job at CDPR is probably like a labor camp in comparison to a job in any of these worldwide AAA companies.

[Very Tired]

I still think Blizzard is a fantastic company

Nintendo, Super Giant Games, Yacht Club Games, Retro Studios and ID Software

Should remember Blizzard did just make national news for banning a tournament player for speaking out against China.