Are there good gaming companies anymore?

[MrFawlty]

Who's defending Blizzard, I'm simply pointing out that rules were made, rules were broken, punishment was handed out... If you dont have the integrity to realize that, then we are done. I personally dont care. If you hate Blizzard that much you really should stop giving them your money.

Who's attacking Blizzard? Im simply pointing out that no one is saying the rules were not broken, people are saying the punishment was not approparate - something they themselves agreed with when the backlash hit them.

[DesoPL]

From Software
Larian Studios
Id Software
CAPCOM
Square is making a great return to form, hopefully FFXVI and the rest of FF7R turn out great
Retro studios is also back, which has had probably the greatest quality games output in the history of the business, I'm still waiting for Metroid Prime 4 though

As far as newcomers go, ZA/UM totally and completely blew everyone's minds with Disco Elysium, and I can't wait for their new releases. They basically made it as a passion project in a win or die situation, which is pretty amazing to see something like that succeed.

Ok i'm curious to hear, why CAPCOM is considered to be good company? I'm not saying is bad either, but they mainly focus now on Resident Evil, while Megaman 11 yeah okay i admit, it got it's flaws but it was good enough to make DLC with playable Protoman, Bass or even Roll. Yeah CAPCOM don't mind fan games in either romhacks or Megaman Maker, but still i feel they don't care for blue bomber series anymore.

[hellhamster]

Ok i'm curious to hear, why CAPCOM is considered to be good company? I'm not saying is bad either, but they mainly focus now on Resident Evil, while Megaman 11 yeah okay i admit, it got it's flaws but it was good enough to make DLC with playable Protoman, Bass or even Roll. Yeah CAPCOM don't mind fan games in either romhacks or Megaman Maker, but still i feel they don't care for blue bomber series anymore.

They make quality games? Most of them anyway. Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter etc are 3 of their most recent ones.

[ThatsOurEric]

If you mean a studio that doesn't enforce or ask "Crunch" of their employees, then no, there probably isn't.

There are probably less toxic environment ones (unlike Riot & Ubisoft), so I guess that's cool?

[Aliven]

They make quality games? Most of them anyway. Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter etc are 3 of their most recent ones.

So making a good game is when the company is good?

[Radaney]

Not entirely sure good and bad can be attributed to a profit driven company.

Does good mean morally or just making good games, what does a good gaming company even mean.

[Stormwolf64]

Nihon Falcom, the producers of the Trails series. They've been putting out a 60+ hour long epic JRPG every year for the past decade now, and the quality of their games is very high. They are arguably the best JRPG developer today.

There is also Stoic Studio, the developers of the Banner Saga. They have not yet announced their next game, but I am looking forward to it.

- - - Updated - - -

I would also like to give a shoutout to Aurogon, the developers of the Chinese Paladin and the Gujian series, which is to my knowledge the biggest singleplayer RPG series in China. You can read their long history here. I hope that more effort is invested into the localizations of their games and the presentation of their games. It looks like there is some good stuff in their games, but when I played Gujian 3 I found that the localization was lacking, and that the game itself to be really rough around the edges. Still better than most Western AAA games from within the last 10-15 years, IMO.

falcom was great up until Cold Steel

[Biomega]

Companies get away with shady stuff because we let them. Don't buy their products if you disagree with their practices; if you keep buying into games with bad design and business models, they'll keep making them.

[Rendark]

If it's AAA then no.

[Arrashi]

falcom was great up until Cold Steel

Gotta agree with that. Used to love pretty much all of their games until Cold Steel which was...meh. Can't even force myself to play third one.

[rudolphdaniel6]

Gracious, that is valid, no ruler decides always and all that, and even the best craftsmen have made duds occasionally so it's not really astounding. Id are as yet the best FPS engineers available if you were to ask me.

[Termak]

WUBE, makers of Factorio

[tankbug]

Nintendo suing everyone that uses their characters for non commercial purposes

Any company will do the same, it's like the nature of capitalism. Allowing for certain trespasses for charity or something like that may be a good PR move, but if they don't keep the reins tight, it will be exploited, and it will be very messy. Unless you're one of those patent-predators waiting for a juicy lawsuit, it's something a company would like to avoid.

I think I would rather look for other "good guy" traits for a company. Giving devs creative control, no crunch, keeping the devs well compensated, safe and have good social policies. On the customer side, making sure that games are good on release, making it easy for customers to get a refund if necessary, being conservative with microtransactions, keeping games alive.

[Advent]

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?

Someday, somebody's going to have to explain to me why a morally "good" company is even relevant to gamers. I believe that any company that is trying to sell you something, should make sure their product is of a decent quality. What "ethics" or "moral standard" the company has seems like meaningless nonsense that gamers shouldn't even bother caring about. That's something the people who work there need to concern themselves with imo. These strange games activist-types have to be some of the oddest people I've ever come across in the gaming sphere.

[Mehrunes]

Seriously Paradox? Okay the only thing i can say about Paradox, they do sick number of DLC's for thier games. Look at Crusader Kings 2 for example. Or Stellaris.

There's nothing inherently wrong with DLCs. Paradox uses their DLC policy so they can maintain developing their main games even years after their release, even to the point of overhauling them (even if it means admitting their design was not as good as they thought it is, as was the case with Imperator: Rome). And even then each DLC is accompanies with a free patch that has some of the new features. To the point that some of their content patches are made entirely of free content, with no accompanying DLC.

And as they recently released their first sequel to a game using their current DLC policy, they showed they are not going to follow the Sims model where the sequel is stripped away out of the DLC content of the previous game, with the company then releasing the same DLCs again. CKIII has the stark majority of CKII's DLC content in its base game as it is, so CKIII DLCs are bound to go in new directions and expand the game even further.

[Mechazod]

Vanillawares releases have all been solid. I want to say Treasure too, but not to versed on what they did after 6th gen.