Are there good gaming companies anymore?

[Maruka]

from software makes great games that are mostly free of political and social issues.

[Mirishka]

Sure, but they are small and don't catch your attention. Supergiant Games made Bastion and Hades yet all we see is people like you thinking about their dear big companies who are their childhood friends or something.

Hades is awesome.

[Cosmic Janitor]

People still looking for that messiah company? Get over it, they are all run by people. Some are good, some are bad, it's nigh on impossible to find one that doesn't have some downsides.

[Mirishka]

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.

Lots of good points there.

Witcher 3 gained them a lot of goodwill with gamers, particularly with all those little free DLC packs for W3 (that most companies would have charged for) and then for releasing 2 excellent expansions for the game. But the company itself is shady AF, and the issues with Cyberpunk - like lying about crunch and outright hiding the PS4/XB1 versions - kinda pulled back the wool on that a bit.

[evertonbelmontt]

Nihom Falcom really deserves some praise.

Their Trails series is A M A Z I N G.

Hands down best RPG I've ever played, and I played a LOT.


The cold steel is the only one I don't like very much, but the story is still pretty good.

[gobio]

Whats up with no good company we are all doomed?

Wait yes we are all doomed since we saw what happened in 2020 but that is not just gaming.

There is a thing can branding. Its like asking what is a good wine company? what is a good logistic company? what is a good lawyer firm? It's called branding. You don't go say, why are you asking if the wine company is good? Just taste the wine and see for yourselves! Yeah if I have all the time in the world or if I have the same priority and interest for all product I would do that. But excuse me if I ask for a reliable brand.

[MrPaladinGuy]

Not in the tripple A category, I learned my lesson with CD Projekt Red

[Krastyn]

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.

I think this is close to how I feel. Almost every company is there to make money. If they don't, they'll be out of business. I think the main reason why people are lumping more and more companies into the "bad" category is simply because negativity gets way, way more screen time. Look how often thigs get "review bombed" to the negative. Not even remotely how much they get it to the positive. So people just constantly see negative press about a company, and it becomes the norm to just outright bash that company.

There is no studio who's game I would pick up, or avoid, simply because they worked on it. Each game should be looked at on its own.

[Lord Pebbleton]

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.

In the particular scenario presented in this thread, work ethic falls a bit in the background. I am judging by the quality (and possibly quantity) of the final game delivered to the audience, and I cannot think of a single company with an immaculate record as of late.

[D3athsting]

Probably only small companies that care about their customer base more than shareholders (often because they don't sell stocks)

[VinceVega]

I still really enjoy games from Obsidian and Paradox. Paradox makes money with millions of DLCs that is true, but you are not required to use them and can always play in older versions of the game if you don't like new changes. Also i LOVE every DLC they put out. It is like playing a game again for the first time. Stellaris and CK are two of my alltime favourites.
Also: Supergiant Games (Hades), while making indie games they are growing with the success of Hades and their older titles.

And: Despite their recent failures i have not given up hope with Bioware. Up until DA:I i enjoyed every game and i don't think MA:Andromeda was even half as bad as people make it out to be. Anthem looked like top down decision... interesting world, bad execution. Also we allready have destiny2... which has its own problems. Looter shooter market is saturated while single player games can never be enough^^

[MeTaL GuArD]

From good publishers, I think Devolver Digital counts. They don't get themselves involved with the usual abusive drama that other publishers (like "Unicronic Arts"...) do, and their approach to the whole gaming thing seems pretty similar to the games they publish: wacky and kinda fun.

As for good game devs themselves, I only know some of the small ones, like Team Cherry, who, to be fair, only released Hollow Knight, and Silksong is nowhere in sight yet, but who have already gained praise for releasing a ton of free content to an already impressive game. Here's hoping they keep that trend up.
I also loved Moon Studios' Ori games - beautiful art style and semi-challenging gameplay(as it happens, Ori and the Blind Forest is on a huge sale on Steam right now).

And: Despite their recent failures i have not given up hope with Bioware. Up until DA:I i enjoyed every game and i don't think MA:Andromeda was even half as bad as people make it out to be. Anthem looked like top down decision... interesting world, bad execution. Also we allready have destiny2... which has its own problems. Looter shooter market is saturated while single player games can never be enough^^

It has been confirmed that Bioware was the architect of their own demise with Anthem, with the management twiddling thumbs and tossing paper balls at eachother for 4-6 years before actually coming up with a game because EA was starting to ask if they are almost done with it. And those assholes are still in the company, on the same positions as before.

[Dhrizzle]

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

Saddest thing about that incident is the player made his comments knowing he would be banned as Blizzard have a blanket ban on making political statements, but arsehole gamers decided to take the focus away from his comments on Hong Kong and make it all about Blizzard instead.

[Dezerte]

While all companies are ultimately profit driven to some extent. Some are more so than others, and that would be one way of ranking the companies - a sort of ethical business ranking of sorts perhaps? Of course there's a lot that happens behind closed doors, and a good PR department can elevate a company higher than it "should be".

[Kumorii]

Saddest thing about that incident is the player made his comments knowing he would be banned as Blizzard have a blanket ban on making political statements, but arsehole gamers decided to take the focus away from his comments on Hong Kong and make it all about Blizzard instead.

BuT tHeY aRe FiGhTiNg ThE gOoD fIgHt!

[D3athsting]

You serious? Nintendo? Good joke...

Nintendo suing everyone that uses their characters for non commercial purposes

[MrFawlty]

Saddest thing about that incident is the player made his comments knowing he would be banned as Blizzard have a blanket ban on making political statements, but arsehole gamers decided to take the focus away from his comments on Hong Kong and make it all about Blizzard instead.

People believe that Blizzard over reacted.

[kail]

I don't see CDPR as a "bad" gaming company after Cyberpunk. They fucked up on this one terribly, sure. If they left Cyberpunk as is without the constant fixes, then I will quickly lose respect for them as an honest gaming company. They put too many chips on movie star Reeves IMO and they should have just bypassed the prior console generation as a whole. The PS4/XB1 consoles are simply incapable of running a game like Cyberpunk at an enjoyable experience.

Their most hyped release flopped, we'll see how they manage it from now on but at least from the PC side of things the game works.

[Aenigma84]

Paradox is pretty descent overall

they might suck at releasing a game sometimes but your guaranteed to get a ton of after support and good content dlc for years
crusader kings had a pretty good release .
while imperator rome sucked at release but they spend a shitload of efford to fix it where certain other companies would have dropped it like a rock (thinking ea with andromeda here)
but they are ussually a bit of a niche games though.

[AcidicSyn]

Unknown Worlds. They made Subnautica and that game is amazing for those into the survival sandbox genre. They're also entirely transparent about what the devs are doing (used to have an open trello board but since moved to some other similar service- same thing though)

Concerned Ape. It's just one dude, but he made Stardew Valley and that game is just precious.

Pathea Games. They made My Time at Portia. Fantastic game (similar to stardew).

Projector Games. They (possibly just one person too with help from outsourced artists). They made FortressCraft Evolved and that games pretty damn fun too. (similar to Factorio in the whole setting up an automated factory aspect while fighting the environment; but first person) It's basically scifi minecraft

Cryptivo. They're just about done with The Universim, a sort of cross between a city builder and the old long since abandoned god game genre. Lots of hours sunk into early access but waiting for 1.0 now before diving back in.

All of these games target fairly niche demographics though, if you don't like builders, sandboxes, etc you won't like these.

Larian as others have mentioned.

Many, many more