Worst modern AAA videogame publisher

[KManX89]

Get your pitchforks out. This is a thread for people to vent their anger. :evil:

Anyway, I'd have to say Konami by a wide margin. Say what you will about Capcom, they're slowly starting to turn things around. MvC:I looks good, REmake 2 is in the works, and it's very possible DMC5 will finally be announced sometime later this year (Hideaki Itsuno teased a new game reveal in 2017, very likely DMC5 or Dragon's Dogma 2). What has Konami done besides royally f*ck up over the last 2 years?

Between their holding beloved IPs hostage in favor of pachinko machines, mistreatment of staff, blacklisting Kojima, butchering The Phantom Pain's story, cancelling one of the most hyped survival horror games in years (Silent Hills), scamming Steam PES players with a last gen port using PS4/Xbox One visuals in advertising (that's f*cking illegal), turning Metal Gear into a generic survival zombie game (Metal Gear Left 4 Dead, err, I mean Survive), releasing a $50 budget game with offline lag (Super Bomberman R), etc., no company has done more to make me revile them in such a short span than Konami. Seriously, can anyone name a single thing they did that WASN'T a gigantic middle finger to gamers everywhere since 2015?

In the legendary words of Jim Sterling, "Konami is Konami and Konami is the worst." Or, to quote GDT and the words of millions, "#F*cKonami."

 

[KManX89]

Really? No one's going to weigh in on this?

I thought this would've been the perfect thread/poll to vent, so to speak. I've seen this same poll posted on other forums. Nothing gets a good hate thread going like trashing other companies' shady practices.

 

[Hel]

Well, I'd love to contribute, anything to keep the forum alive, but I'm afraid I don't know enough about the gaming industry to say something intelligent. I only play very few games, all of which are developed by different companies, and the only one in that poll that I could talk about is EA. The Sims 4 is full of game-breaking bugs that they refuse to patch, and half-baked content that has already been there in previous games, but much better. Does that make them a $hitty publisher in general, though? I don't know. What else have they done wrong to earn their place on your list?

Also, why is Capcom not an option? They've been pi$$ing me off with their exclusivity crap ever since they got serious with RE, and just as they're beginning to get better, they throw out a new game that doesn't appeal to me at all. Does that make a publisher $hitty?

 

[Turo602]

Yeah, Capcom hasn't really done much to prove they've turned themselves around. Not only is Street Fighter V exclusive to PS4, they go ahead and lock everything behind DLC and make it nearly impossible to unlock everything so that you go ahead and buy the DLC. What a nice front they put up saying Street Fighter V is going to be the only version of Street Fighter V, yet what it's gonna cost you to have everything unlocked in the game is gonna be enough to have bought the game a few times over. Even getting the season pass doesn't get you everything. There's still a f*ck ton of costumes and stages locked away. It wouldn't be so bad if the base game actually felt like it was packed with content, but it's not. The game is a huge rip-off.

Then there's Resident Evil 7 which once again, releases as a bare bones product, only for them to squeeze an extra 30 bucks out of us for content that was already done by the game's release. Then the game itself was a huge slap to the face of Resident Evil fans. Honestly, it feels like it was made for the casual audience, with homages to the original games just to shut up the fans. I swear, the amount of fake Youtubers who streamed this game just to make a quick buck by overreacting to it and not paying attention to the cutscenes and story, who would never play the likes of Resident Evil REmake, prove it. This was no revival of the survival horror genre, it was just the following of the horror trend.

And while I'm looking forward to Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite, it's complete utter bull**** that they're already trying to swindle us again by making 6 characters part of a "deluxe edition." Capcom hasn't changed. They're still as awful as they were last generation.

 

[KManX89]

^They're not "locked" behind the deluxe edition, they're all part of a $30 season pass and can be individually purchased as they come out via vanilla version if the consumer so chooses ("chooses" being the important keyword). Let's not act like they're doing anything out of the ordinary with this one, announcing DLC and season passes before the game even comes out, NetherRealm did the same thing with Mortal Kombat X as do a lot of other games.

This isn't even getting into the fact that quite a few people demonize DLC regardless of context. They actually think they're entitled to free content and any and all DLC add-ons (even story expansions) are ripped as a "ploy to nickel and dime me," I've encountered such people on other forums myself. What they don't realize is that, if they had their way, they would be paying more to get games at launch. Development costs have skyrocketed while retail prices have remained the same and so they have to be supplemented in some way with the current climate. It's either that or paying $90-120 to buy new games with all the content packed in. Yes, EA offers free DLC maps for Battlefield (credit where credit's due), but they make a $hit ton of money off that franchise, so it wouldn't hurt them financially to do that (I know Activision makes more off CoD and still charges for new map-packs, but that's Activision for you). Most games don't make nearly the kind of money that would justify creating and giving away new content for free.

PS, there is an "other" option, just sayin'. I still don't see how anyone can justify Capcom somehow being worse than Konami (or any publisher for that matter, again, "Konami is Konami and Konami is the worst"). At least they don't reduce their IPs to glorified gambling machines and staff to janitorial work. Hell, they wasted their one chance to win back disillusioned fans on a MGS3 pachinko machine as opposed to a Fox Engine remake on consoles, opting instead to give us a poor man's L4D which nobody wanted or asked for from this franchise, the dislikes on the Metal Gear Survive trailer don't lie:

 

[JujuLodestar]

My vote goes to Ubi$oft.

Really. I hope that company rots in the burning pits of the seven hells. I bet you if Hades devoured their souls he's die from food poisoning. No seriously, they are such an atrocious company with some of the worst business models and their incompetence in all genre's is staggering. HOW CAN YOU FAIL TO BALANCE A CO-OP GAME?
EVEN WORSE, HOW DO YOU MESS UP BALANCE THAT ACTUALLY WORKED IN A PREVIOUS GAME!?
They can't do a single thing right. And it's actually really disgusting they are still in business.


EA and Activision are also worthy of being absolutely worthless in the genre's they "excel" in.

The only thing all of these companies excel in is testing my goddamn patience.

To be quite frank, the gaming industry has worn out my patience. And I hope a solid 75% of all triple A franchises along with the companies drop dead.

 

[Knight Hawk]

Right off the top of my head, I can think of 2 AAA devs.
The first one would be Sega. You can see the quality of pretty much all their games from the Wii- onward is garbage. Any of their modern Sonic games are terrible. And the Mario Kart copy, anyone? It really doesn't help that they haven't made anything memorable (in a good way) recently, as far as I can tell.

And the other one I would have to say would be Valve. All they have been doing since the release of DotA 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive are skins that don't affect the game in anyway shape of form. Oh, I almost forgot the worst: They replaced costume sprays with dev made sprays. With limited use. Yes, you can only use the sprays like 50 times, then it's gone. Oh, did I mention that you have to pay money for it?

And people wonder why I play CS:S more than CS:GO.

 

[JujuLodestar]

Right off the top of my head, I can think of 2 AAA devs.
The first one would be Sega. You can see the quality of pretty much all their games from the Wii- onward is garbage. Any of their modern Sonic games are terrible. And the Mario Kart copy, anyone? It really doesn't help that they haven't made anything memorable (in a good way) recently, as far as I can tell.

And the other one I would have to say would be Valve. All they have been doing since the release of DotA 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive are skins that don't affect the game in anyway shape of form. Oh, I almost forgot the worst: They replaced costume sprays with dev made sprays. With limited use. Yes, you can only use the sprays like 50 times, then it's gone. Oh, did I mention that you have to pay money for it?

And people wonder why I play CS:S more than CS:GO.

Ouch. Hit one of two favorite devs. I've enjoyed next to all Sonic games (Aside from boom and the racing one. Although I'll give All Stars credit for doing something that Mario kart actually ended up copying. Land-Air racing.)

And Valve games (On PC.) Have lasted far longer than they have any business living. Not my favorite. They have some really fun games.

 

[KManX89]

Right off the top of my head, I can think of 2 AAA devs.
The first one would be Sega. You can see the quality of pretty much all their games from the Wii- onward is garbage. Any of their modern Sonic games are terrible. And the Mario Kart copy, anyone? It really doesn't help that they haven't made anything memorable (in a good way) recently, as far as I can tell.

And the other one I would have to say would be Valve. All they have been doing since the release of DotA 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive are skins that don't affect the game in anyway shape of form. Oh, I almost forgot the worst: They replaced costume sprays with dev made sprays. With limited use. Yes, you can only use the sprays like 50 times, then it's gone. Oh, did I mention that you have to pay money for it?

And people wonder why I play CS:S more than CS:GO.

Sega still makes the awesome Yakuza games and owns Bayonetta, so I wouldn't put them in the "worst" category. Hell, I'd say that makes them infinitely better than Konami who literally holds all their beloved IPs hostage and/or slaps them on a whorehouse slot machine. The only two actual games they've announced as of late consist of a low-budget, mobile-caliber title for $50 (Super Bomberman R) and a complete mockery and disgrace to the Metal Gear name (Metal Gear Survive). Silent Hill and Castlevania are pretty much dead and have been run into the ground with sh!tty sequels and spin-offs, the former they actually licensed out to third-rate indie Western developers. Hell, they cancelled a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to inject new life into the SH franchise with one of the most hyped survival horror entries in years with a friggin' dream team behind it (Silent Hills). And MGSV:TPP, their last major AAA game has been turned into a microtransactioned mess and still has an incomplete story thanks to their interfering with development.

F*ck Konami, they literally can't do anything right this day and age. Hell, I think it's a safe bet that they actually WANT you to hate them after everything they've pulled the last 2 years.

 

[Romero]

That was a long list of allegations against Konami. If half of it is true (I don't have any other sources for it), then it'll be hard for other companies to beat Konami in douchery. Screwing up games are bad enough, but not bad enough to top a list like this IMO.
Unethical, mistreatment of staff etc, I'll just take your (and Jim Sterling's) word for it.

I don't know what the other companies have been doing, but I dont' see how they can possibly beat Konami, if half of what I just heard about Konami is true.

 

[KManX89]

That was a long list of allegations against Konami. If half of it is true (I don't have any other sources for it), then it'll be hard for other companies to beat Konami in douchery. Screwing up games are bad enough, but not bad enough to top a list like this IMO.
Unethical, mistreatment of staff etc, I'll just take your (and Jim Sterling's) word for it.

I don't know what the other companies have been doing, but I dont' see how they can possibly beat Konami, if half of what I just heard about Konami is true.

Believe me when I say: all of this is true and is easily verifiable. Hell, I posted a link to the video of them scamming PC PES players with a last gen port and falsely advertising it using visuals from the PS4 and Xbox One which is, of course, f**king illegal.

Here it is again:

Hell, these dirty scumbags actually took it a step further and hid user reviews so nobody knew they were being scammed.

Konami is, indeed, the worst.

 

[Romero]

I did watch the video, Jim talk a bit too fast for me to understand every word he say, but I understood most of it.

 

[cheezMcNASTY]

My vote goes to Ubi$oft.

Really. I hope that company rots in the burning pits of the seven hells. I bet you if Hades devoured their souls he's die from food poisoning. No seriously, they are such an atrocious company with some of the worst business models and their incompetence in all genre's is staggering. HOW CAN YOU FAIL TO BALANCE A CO-OP GAME?
EVEN WORSE, HOW DO YOU MESS UP BALANCE THAT ACTUALLY WORKED IN A PREVIOUS GAME!?
They can't do a single thing right. And it's actually really disgusting they are still in business.

Ubisoft is the #1 worst right now, I'd have to agree with you. They have consistently released an extremely-hyped, half-completed game. Rainbow Six: Siege, The Division, and For Honor all enjoyed phenomenal numbers on release and soon after crashed and burned.

Slow patches and lack of communication killed the community's faith in the developer's support. Only one of those three games has recovered.

 

[JujuLodestar]

Ubisoft is the #1 worst right now, I'd have to agree with you. They have consistently released an extremely-hyped, half-completed game. Rainbow Six: Siege, The Division, and For Honor all enjoyed phenomenal numbers on release and soon after crashed and burned.

Slow patches and lack of communication killed the community's faith in the developer's support. Only one of those three games has recovered.

And I gave For Honor a chance myself. But of course, Consoles get the **** end of the deal too.

BUT as much as I hate them, I don't blame them for the console version. Sony and M$ just such at making game consoles. They make ghetto PC's. As such, the console versions are significantly worse than the PC versions of the same game.

I have lost faith in many triple A and the console market is abyssal as an investment if you really look at it. The inner workings are VERY flawed and the strange polices make support for said games take several weeks when the PC community already has the NEXT GODDAMN patch.

Absolutely repulsive.

 

[Turo602]

^They're not "locked" behind the deluxe edition, they're all part of a $30 season pass and can be individually purchased as they come out via vanilla version if the consumer so chooses ("chooses" being the important keyword). Let's not act like they're doing anything out of the ordinary with this one, announcing DLC and season passes before the game even comes out, NetherRealm did the same thing with Mortal Kombat X as do a lot of other games.

This isn't even getting into the fact that quite a few people demonize DLC regardless of context. They actually think they're entitled to free content and any and all DLC add-ons (even story expansions) are ripped as a "ploy to nickel and dime me," I've encountered such people on other forums myself. What they don't realize is that, if they had their way, they would be paying more to get games at launch. Development costs have skyrocketed while retail prices have remained the same and so they have to be supplemented in some way with the current climate. It's either that or paying $90-120 to buy new games with all the content packed in. Yes, EA offers free DLC maps for Battlefield (credit where credit's due), but they make a $hit ton of money off that franchise, so it wouldn't hurt them financially to do that (I know Activision makes more off CoD and still charges for new map-packs, but that's Activision for you). Most games don't make nearly the kind of money that would justify creating and giving away new content for free.

Yes, they are "locked" behind some stupid pay wall. Those characters will no doubt be ready for use by the time of release. I don't care if it's a "choice." That's a poor excuse nor is it justified just because other companies share the same shady business practices. Capcom is in no position to be doing this after the sh*t they pulled with both Street Fighter and Resident Evil. I get that it's not uncommon for developers to have season passes, but there's a major difference between Crystal Dynamics releasing a season pass for Rise of the Tomb Raider, a full game worthy of its price, with extra content being released at a way later date, and Capcom releasing a bare bones product and charging you extra for content that's been purposely withheld. Development costs skyrocketing isn't a valid enough excuse considering how many other games offer way more content and still provide you with a substantial amount of extra content through a season pass.

PS, there is an "other" option, just sayin'. I still don't see how anyone can justify Capcom somehow being worse than Konami (or any publisher for that matter, again, "Konami is Konami and Konami is the worst"). At least they don't reduce their IPs to glorified gambling machines and staff to janitorial work. Hell, they wasted their one chance to win back disillusioned fans on a MGS3 pachinko machine as opposed to a Fox Engine remake on consoles, opting instead to give us a poor man's L4D which nobody wanted or asked for from this franchise, the dislikes on the Metal Gear Survive trailer don't lie:

I thought this thread was to vent our frustrations with video game companies doing stupid things? Or is this a "let's hate Konami" thread? Because I personally don't have any interest in Konami post The Phantom Pain. As far as I'm concerned, the Metal Gear franchise is done. I've enjoyed some of their classic games, and I have no opinion on the Silent Hill franchise, so I have sh*t to say about them other than they suck. Capcom on the other hand actually has games I'm interested in and are f*cking them up.

 

[KManX89]

I did watch the video, Jim talk a bit too fast for me to understand every word he say, but I understood most of it.

I didn't even delve into specifics on the whole spiel with Kojima. In case you missed it, they literally kept the man from receiving his own award on HIS game! No, you're not misreading that. Fans in attendance were livid when they heard that he wasn't allowed to receive his award on The Phantom Pain that he earned despite Konami literally doing everything in their power to restrict him. They even went as far as to lock Kojima in a separate room and keep him from speaking with his own team during the final 6 months of development FFS!

Here's a live feed of the event. Fans were booing Konami for this blatant dickholery, and rightfully so:

And still, it gets worse: Konami later scrubbed his name from the game's cover art. Yup, their dickholery really knows no bounds, name one other company that actually f*cking removes FAN ART on Twitter for copyright infringement:

Speaking of which, did you know the planned Silent Hills actually had Guillermo Del Toro, Hideo Kojima, Norman Reedus and former devs from Team Silent ALL working on the game? It's for this reason that it was one of the most hyped survival horror projects to come around in quite some time, maybe ever. It even had an awesome demo (P.T.) that single-handedly revived the genre and spurred a wave of survival horror games in its likeness, but Konami, being completely oblivious to what gamers want (this day and age, anyway), outright cancelled the game and removed the P.T. demo from the PlayStation Store. Priorities FTW!

I don't even want to THINK of how batsh*t scary the final game would've been after seeing this sh*t in action (the LPer's reactions are f'ing priceless BTW):

 

[PinkHerb]

Konami, Hands down

 

[JujuLodestar]

Yes, they are "locked" behind some stupid pay wall. Those characters will no doubt be ready for use by the time of release. I don't care if it's a "choice." That's a poor excuse nor is it justified just because other companies share the same shady business practices. Capcom is in no position to be doing this after the sh*t they pulled with both Street Fighter and Resident Evil. I get that it's not uncommon for developers to have season passes, but there's a major difference between Crystal Dynamics releasing a season pass for Rise of the Tomb Raider, a full game worthy of its price, with extra content being released at a way later date, and Capcom releasing a bare bones product and charging you extra for content that's been purposely withheld. Development costs skyrocketing isn't a valid enough excuse considering how many other games offer way more content and still provide you with a substantial amount of extra content through a season pass.



I thought this thread was to vent our frustrations with video game companies doing stupid things? Or is this a "let's hate Konami" thread? Because I personally don't have any interest in Konami post The Phantom Pain. As far as I'm concerned, the Metal Gear franchise is done. I've enjoyed some of their classic games, and I have no opinion on the Silent Hill franchise, so I have sh*t to say about them other than they suck. Capcom on the other hand actually has games I'm interested in and are f*cking them up.

Let's not forgot how much more diverse and larger the Roster of 4 is. The ONLY thing SFV actually has going for it is graphics. 4 was better in every other way.

Re7 is a good one run horror game too. But that's where the praise ends.

 

[Foxtrot94]

They're not "locked" behind the deluxe edition, they're all part of a $30 season pass and can be individually purchased as they come out via vanilla version if the consumer so chooses ("chooses" being the important keyword). Let's not act like they're doing anything out of the ordinary with this one, announcing DLC and season passes before the game even comes out, NetherRealm did the same thing with Mortal Kombat X as do a lot of other games.

Every single word you said in the piece that I bolded is absolutely true (and possibly the only thing I have to commend Capcom for when it comes to SFV), buuuuuuuuuut the thing about the underlined piece is that NR, unlike Capcom, released a complete game worth its price right off the bat. Capcom pushed out an incredibly barebones game, making people less accepting of DLCs and Season Passes and the like, despite the fact that there's no paywalls like SFIV's Super Edition, Super Arcade, Ultra and all that yadda yadda.

Despite that though, since you mentioned MKX, I have to say **** WB. Between their Kombat Packs rip offs that force you to spend money for characters you possibly don't want (I wanted Predator and Alien but didn't give a flying **** about the others, but oooooooh, God forbid selling them separately... at the very least Capcom did THAT), their botched support for PC - my platform - denying it access to the balance patch, the improved netcode, and the Kombat Pack 2 until months after the console versions got them, the royal mess with Batman: Arkham Knight, and the fact that they won't release Injustice 2 on PC, they've given me enough reasons to hate them with a passion.

 

[KManX89]

Every single word you said in the piece that I bolded is absolutely true (and possibly the only thing I have to commend Capcom for when it comes to SFV), buuuuuuuuuut the thing about the underlined piece is that NR, unlike Capcom, released a complete game worth its price right off the bat. Capcom pushed out an incredibly barebones game, making people less accepting of DLCs and Season Passes and the like, despite the fact that there's no paywalls like SFIV's Super Edition, Super Arcade, Ultra and all that yadda yadda.

Despite that though, since you mentioned MKX, I have to say **** WB. Between their Kombat Packs rip offs that force you to spend money for characters you possibly don't want (I wanted Predator and Alien but didn't give a flying **** about the others, but oooooooh, God forbid selling them separately... at the very least Capcom did THAT), their botched support for PC - my platform - denying it access to the balance patch, the improved netcode, and the Kombat Pack 2 until months after the console versions got them, the royal mess with Batman: Arkham Knight, and the fact that they won't release Injustice 2 on PC, they've given me enough reasons to hate them with a passion.

But, unlike SFV (and like MKX), MvC:I actually will have Story, Arcade and CPU battle modes and more available at launch to warrant that Season Pass/DLC.

It seems Capcom has learned their lesson from the release of Street Fighter V, as MvC: Infinite will have a variety of both single-player and multiplayer content on the disc from day one. At launch, players will have access to full Arcade and VS CPU modes, a cinematic story campaign, Mission Mode (a collection of smaller objectives that’ll act as tutorials as sorts for the game’s fighting engine and individual characters), a database about both the Marvel and Capcom universes (which unlocks as you play), Ranked and Casual online modes, and online lobbies with the ability to spectate matches.

Again, it's a step in the right direction at least which is more than I can say for Konami. They literally can't do anything right this day and age:

Speaking of which, Capcom has an anonymous title listed for their 2018 financial report, there's a good chance it's DMC5. Or REmake 2.