Game developers and publishers you won't buy from... - or: fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, I'm a fanboy/girl.

[TiggerNits]

I honestly can't think of a major developer I hate. Sure, EA sucks but they've atleast made an effort in the last 2 years to stop being terrible. Refunds through origin are way easier and faster than Steam, their customer support in general has stepped up and Battlefield 1 has been pretty fun. That said, their handling of day one DLC shit is still the pits and I honestly don't get why they can't make a sequel to CnC Generals. I think the main reason I don't hate EA is more due to the fact that I never liked the Sims and didn't feel the need to play the new Sim City because 3000 was already perfect. My wife is all about Battlefront as well, even though I can't stand shooters on Consoles she plays the shit out of that one.

Since I don't play Assassin's Creed, I still like Ubisoft pretty good (seriously, Wildlands and Siege are really, really fun with friends)

Activision always makes really well controlled and balanced games, they just need to stop it with the "FPS but with lasers and super powers" shit they've been doing with COD lately.

So long as Nintendo makes Mario Kart games I will never be able to hate them

Konami has me pissed off for killing off MGS the way they did, but all they have to do to make me no longer hate them is release the Fox engine to other developers

Graphsim is still cool, but I wish they'd make combat sims again (Hornet and A-10 Cuba were amazing), because X-Plane will always be the 2nd banana to Microsoft Flight Sim, even if MS continues to do nothing with it.

The only Gearbox shit I've played has been the Borderlands games, and I actually really dig the world building they do with them and don't mind the half assed humor because the shooting is really crisp, shame about the loot system though. They really need to just make guns customizable, even though it would ruin their "FPS-Diablo" dreams

I suppose BioWare is mine, because I haven't really liked anything they did since KOTOR so I haven't bought anything from them since then. It just seems like they try to fuel the "Special Snowflake Minority Friendly gamer" bullshitin everything they do and kind of say "Fuck it" when it comes to QA and actual gameplay. Like, I can deal Bethesda's hilariously broken shit because it's normally funny and endearing, and I can excuse Bohemian's janky shit because they're always swinging for the fences, but Obsidian is bunting every at bat and they don't even hustle down the baseline when it does connect because they're only at the game to kneel during the national anthem and show off their #BLM tattoo during the post game interview

 

[ADN_VIII]

After the events of the last month, I'd have to say EA and Bioware.

About a month ago someone in bumfuck, Oklahoma spent about 400 of my dollars on porn subscriptions. So I call my bank up and contest the charges from the start date to the end date of the transactions. In that time frame I had put about twenty bucks into the cartel market in SWTOR for some stuff to help a friend get going and those transactions got caught in the net by BofA. BofA sends me an email with a list of the transactions they were going to dispute and I email EA customer support with the info, explaining that someone had used the card attached to my account and that a few transactions were going to be contested. No answer. The claim goes though to completion, and BofA credits my account for the total. Then I get an email from EA, telling me that the chargebacks were against policy and they were permabanning my account. I answer and explain the situation again. They tell me no dice. My whole EA account got nuked because of twenty bucks.

Though, I will say that explaining that I don't live in Oklahoma and wouldn't buy porn online to the BofA rep had to be the funniest conversation in my life.
Me: "No, I can say with absolute certainty that I didn't buy pornography online."
Rep: "How can you say that?"
Me: "it's free all over the internet. Why *would* I pay for it?"

EDIT: I never actually found where in their TOS or the SWTOR EULA it says that refunds are grounds for account nuking.

 

[POWER IN MISERY]

i genuinely hope gearbox's death is dragged out as slowly as possible. i want the last two remaining employees, randy and anthony, to kiss and jump down the elevator shaft of their burning office building only for their fall to be broken by thousands of unbought battleborn discs.

 

[millais]

Oh yeah, now I remember that I made such a concerted effort to avoid Gaijin Entertainment that I have not availed myself of their products for more than 2 years now. They are everything that's wrong with Slavic game developers. Blatantly money grubbing, insensitive and insulting to non-Slavic/non-Chinese consumers and community, releasing constant stream of game-breaking patches, and on top of that they are absurdly enthusiastic historical revisionists. I'm not talking about "removing swastikas from WWII game" level of historical revisionism, which is understandable because swastikas in video games can be illegal in Germany. These dumbasses were removing and historical Nationalist Chinese, Finnish, and South African insignia from their game because of petty historical Russian and Communist Chinese grievances against those countries that are not even enshrined in law. Even worse, they based all their game's simulation performance modeling on "classified" Soviet military archival sources which, if it even exists, was probably based on biased trials performed on beat-up equipment by unskilled technicians with the sole purpose of demonstrating the superiority of communist engineering and design over the flawed designs of foreign manufacturers. When people painstakingly showed Gaijin developers how much their simulation modeling diverged from historical German, American, and British testing and trials data, they refused to acknowledge any kind of discrepancy and stuck steadfastly to their secret Soviet manuals and archives that only they have access to. So it is a huge and insulting lie for them to constantly tout historical accuracy as the greatest selling point of their product.

Only one time did I ever see them accede to the legitimacy of historical American documentation and accordingly make a change to their game, but only because there was no contradictory Soviet data on which to base a rejection of the claim.

 

[John Titor]

Konami for the fact that they don't give a damn about their customers or employees. That new law in Japan about gambling is soon going to fuck them in the ass and they start trying to win our love back only for me to laugh at them.

Bethesda is more of a "skeptical to buy from" since I still have fun with their games, buggy or not, but I also can't ignore the shady shit mentioned here. I also wish they go back to their original design practices instead of dumbing them down further.

 

[Hyperion]

Bioware and EA

Because Warhammer related grudges will last until the End Times

 

[Hui]

EA, Gearbox, Blizzard, and Capcom.

 

[Emperor Julian]

The only one I really draw the line with is EA. The other companies mentioned I simply don't buy from when their games are shit and genrally wait for word of mouth recommendations but I'd be overjoyed if Konami came out with a silent hill game on par with 1-3.But EA are a step bellow Activision and such because they not only make shit games and shitty decisions, they buy up other companies and obliterate them. EA is not only a bad company who can transmute gold into shit but it also drags other good companies down with it's raw incompetance. The number of games we've potentially been denied over the years due to the EA is obscene. not to mention the once proud franshises they've ran into the ground. This company needs to die for the betterment of the art.

 

[patchwork]

Eh, Blizzard. They've really pushed the need to buy extra stuff to get full satisfaction out of their games - while their attention to detail is great in their established universes, you just... miss out on a lot of cool stuff if you don't put in more money. And since they're a big powerhouse in the online market, copycats also push buying add ons and dlc so you feel like you actually got something out of it. And often times you'll just get bored of it within a month. Their games were my childhood but I haven't been able to bring myself to play any of their stuff if it wasn't free.

 

[Ruin]

Bioware and Ubisoft. Not because I have any moral or economic concerns about what they do but simply because their products are often utter trash.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I will never be able to forgive EA even just a fraction of the shit they did.

Never.

The only game I bought from EA within the last decade was Mirror's Edge and I only got that during a Steam Sale for like 50 cents. And even with that title, you could feel how much EA had meddled with it and ruin what could have been a legendary franchise.

I'm a huge fan of the Silent Hunter franchise, so when Ubisoft put some really aweful DRM on Silent Hunter 4, I just gave up on the company. Maybe they aren't as bad anymore, but it's not like I really miss games made by them.

I guess that's a general issue for me:
I don't really boycott a lot of publishers or developers, but their products are just utterly unappealing to me. Acitivision, Blizzard, Bioware... I don't like the stuff they put out. Sometimes it's the business model of releasing a shitton of exclusive content or Day 1 DLC, sometimes it's just that they try to copy some other game too much.
I loved Diablo 2, but Diablo 3 looks as appealing to me as a microwaved turd. Similarly, every Battlefield or Cawadoody nowadays with its 360-noscope bullshit and the nonstop barrage of floaty text in your HUD... Nah. Don't care for that at all.

 

[Medici]

Nexon, they blatantly take advantage of their whales by overpricing the dumbest shit ever. I don't care about cosmetics in Maplestory because I'm not 13, but the fact they're all limited and cost $5 is crazy. They also just added a nearly useless item that costs a shit ton as well. It's just sad people still give those clowns money.

Also Activision, I can't say why though, you're gonna have to purchase my $30 explanation DLC if you really wanna hear it.

 

[teh forist speret]

I won't buy from Ubisoft because Far Cry 5 promotes social justice and white genocide.

 

[SoberBlitz]

A lot of people have already touched upon why they won't touch Gearbox, so I'll not add my reasoning, simply because it's pretty similar to the others. Otherwise, I won't touch BioWare products, mostly due to watching them fall from making a series of rock solid RPGs to make Mass Effect: Andromeda.

 

[Orkeosaurus]

Behavior digital inc for fucking up WH40k eternal crusade and fuck Games Workshop for whoring their franchise out so hard. These guys basically lied about what the game was going to become (think planetside 2 with a 40k skin) and it's just 2011 space marine arcade mode with more factions and vehicles that handle like inflatable toys. I also wasted 50 bucks a few months after release only for it to go f2p in a half year.

Honestly all the 40k games since DoW Retribution have sucked shit but I can't put GW on this list because there's at least 3 WH Fantasy games I love since 2015.

Apparently they also do dead by daylight so I won't be getting that any time soon.

 

[Cato]

No mention of Creative Assembly yet? Really?

Even Alien: Isolation can't allow me to forgive Rome II.

 

[DuskEngine]

All of you talking shit about Gearbox better have a loving home lined up for the Homeworld franchise

 

[millais]

All of you talking shit about Gearbox better have a loving home lined up for the Homeworld franchise

Rob Cunningham's Blackbird Interactive was on course to win the bidding war for the Homeworld IP until Randy Pitchford waded in with Gearbox's big bucks and forced Rob to settle for a perpetual publishing partnership with Gearbox.

 

[vertexwindi]

i genuinely hope gearbox's death is dragged out as slowly as possible. i want the last two remaining employees, randy and anthony, to kiss and jump down the elevator shaft of their burning office building only for their fall to be broken by thousands of unbought battleborn discs.

Anthony doesn't work at Gearbox any more though.

 

[Darndirty]

Ubisoft. Im sure this is an unpopular opinion but both the assassins creed games and Far cry are overrated, some of them start ok but I've never been able to get through one without getting bored, the division was a huge let down, i had such high hopes the first few hours of playtime.