Greediest publisher right now?

Well, ain't modern AAA gaming just a relentless train of it-would-be-so-funny-if-it-wasn't-so-sad hilarity. After a recent latest controversy to add to the perpetually burning dumpster fire, I was inspired to make this thread, as sort of a magic mirror to see who's the greediest of them all. A special Olympics of greed, if you will.

Contender 1: Activision Blizzard

Feats: The originator of the loot box saga. Still selling map packs after everyone else have stopped. Selling a literal red dot for $1. Adding microtransactions to a remaster. "Destiny 2 player base is shrinking, what shall we do? I know - more microtransactions!"

Contender 2: Electronic Arts

Feats: "Sense of pride and accomplishment." Planned to add pay-to-win microtransactions to Star Wars: Battlefront II. Bravely taking on The Man for the right to... ...continue pilfering money from FIFA players.

Contender 3: Take Two/2K

Feats: Abandon plans for GTA V single player DLCs for GTA Online and microtransactions - still complains that "you can't give stuff away for free in perpetuity." Ties NBA 2K's progression to premium currency. Charges said premium currency for a haircut.

Contender 4: Warner Bros

Feats: Love, love, love pre-order DLCs like they love their mums. Broke Shadow of War's Nemesis system so hard (by their own admission) with loot boxes they had to release a giant patch to rebalance everything when it came time to remove them. "One of our developers died. How do we honour him? Why, how about selling a DLC? The proceeds will go to his family - but only if it's bought in most states in the US!"

So, who do you think is the greediest of them all? Want to nominate any more contenders? Let's have a bit of fun.

Edit: rough tally of votes and nominations after 24 hours, just for fun:

1. Electronic Arts: 13
2. Activision Blizzard: 10
3. Nintendo: 7
4. Take Two/2K (Including Rockstar): 6
5. Bethesda: 4
6. Ubisoft: 3
7. Warner Bros: 2
8. Atlus, Epic, Nexon, Square Enix, Sony, Tencent: 1 each

I'm not a hypocrite! If a game is good, I get it.

But okay, I'll play along.

• Atlus: Milking Persona series, the Persona dancing games are seriously overpriced.
• Rockstars: Will always try to force PC gamers double-dip on the console versions before PC version is release a year later.
• Square Enix: Not that they make any games worth buying anyways, but I wouldn't even go see Rise of the Tomb Raider because they profit off it a little bit from MS.

Well.. I'm not giving any money to any of the companies you listed because of their shitty practices. But who's the worst..? I don't know, they all suck so much.

Sony Interactive: Forcing consumers to buy their hardware to experience movies that should be released to theaters instead.

@goldenelementxl: And they have the nerve not to include popcorn for those over priced movie tickets they call "games" :(

Easily Nintendo: Amiibos, Labo, and Nintendo Online which is barely up to Wii standards let alone PS2 standards.

Amiibos are worse than DLC. They want $10 per character to add some costume to a game. The only good thing is they are decent quality.

Activision Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft. The DLC/Microtransactions are just out of control.

Anyone who says Sony/MS/Nintendo are just not paying attention or just being fanboys.

I'd still go with Activision but Bethesda seem to be desperate for the most anti-consumer game developer award, especially release of Fallout 76.

Cosmetic addons for Fallout 76 marked "down" in a sale when they had never been sold before

Charging silly amounts of money for daft cosmetic DLC ($5 for a hairdo anyone), Charging more for a Santa suit (even with the Christmas "sale" price) than the entire game costs.

Charging $80 for cheap rum, repacked in a plastic bottle cover while the marketing clearly made it look like a bespoke glass bottle with a metal cap.

Ripping off their whale customers by quick switching a canvas bag for a nylon one, with out any notification. They then claimed it was due to the canvas bag being too expensive, which rapidly changed to "there's a canvas shortage". Their first try to defuse was to offer customers $5 worth of in game credit. Now they've almost done the right thing and are allegedly sending out the canvas bags but it'll take at least 6 months for them to be ready (says to me that never had any intention of supplying a canvas bag in the first place).

Banning Fallout 76 players for using any kind of mod, including the likes of SweetFX. Then expecting those banned customers to write an essay on why cheating is bad. What's even more lol worthy is that FO76 runs pretty much all of the Fallout 4 mods without issue and with the most minimal changes.

The one thing that should never be forgotten though is that Bethesda invented the over priced cosmetic DLC in the first place.

They're all so fracking bad. That's a tough choice... Remember Destiny 2 when people found out they had been giving people less paid loot boxes than they should have received... Yeah that's pretty bad, right? And they responded by saying thank you, we 'fixed' it, we will now make it take even longer for you to get those loot boxes :cough::cough: as your punishment for outing us. :cough:

That was one of the highlights for me. That was such a beautiful underhanded butt-headed move. So fracking backwards.

Eletronic Arts reached a "the jig is up" point that forced the industry into withdrawal.

Bethesda. It just works

Tempted to say Bethesda at this point, but not 100% sure about that. They did make their season pass for Fallout 4 cost as much as an entire game, and Fallout 76 seems to be a shitshow money grab. I'd say the same about TESO, but that's actually a good MMO and you don't need any extra stuff for it (though I do think a subscription is handy).

I think EA might be the worst, at least they have the longest track record of abuses. What they are doing with SWTOR alone is pretty terrible, but then you factor in all the DLC, microtransactions, and all that stuff, it gets kind of rediculous.

I mean, how many DLC packs are there for The Sims 3 at this point? And how much does each one cost?

• EA
• Activision-Blizzard
• Take-Two

These companies force their subsidiaries (the game studios and their devs) to make the product worse in order to make as much money as possible.

I don't think Ubisoft is as much of an offender because they still try to make games more than services.

I don't think Bethesda qualifies because aside from FO76 all their products have been great games and even when they do include monetization (Paid Mods) it's not at the expense of game play. Also their other studios are allowed to make good games as well.

nintendo, though this gen i think they've gotten alot more consumer friendly. Being able to split up controllers, their lower priced online service, and digital games that are fairly cheap.

Half of the switch gen has been taking Wii U titles and repackaging them into full price games. Development costs for Nintendo must be super low right now.

#1 Activision blizz

#2 EA

#3 Bethesda

Nintendo.

Selling you ports over and over again. You played 1 Zelda, Mario, smash or pokemon, you played them all.

@ajstyles: Except you've likely played none of them.

EA still stands out to me as the most asinine, money-chasing corporate demon of the industry. Everything they’ve done over the past decade has harmed the industry by pushing trends and monetization models that gut otherwise quality games. Plus you can always fall back to their laziness in re-releasing a yearly iteration of FIFA/Madden as a trend that is slowly killing those genres.

EA and activision blizzard

These two are the most infamous corps in the gaming industry.

Well there's a few to choose from right now.

Blizzard are maybe best at being greedy, printing money with WoW and Hearthstone. But then they are good games.

EA are good at being greedy. But they are also assholes.

They bought the NFL license - putting NFL Blitz and NFL2K (the highest rated NFL game) out of business in 2004. Now there is only 1 American Football game on the market.

https://youtu.be/hJPRSRBaFrc?t=527

Oh and they killed Command and Conquer 4 (2010) by making it a departure from base building and micromanagement.

https://youtu.be/OPjsJ_yv46M?t=201

Epic are pretty unscrupulous and shameless, marketing Fortnight aquarely at a 15 year old boy called Troy from Kentucky. They probably did studies to find the exact amount of quirky boisterousness and current things kids are into. I kinda admire them in a way though. Business is business in the end.

Whoever makes Call of Duty. Them.

(ATVI) Activision Blizzard.

Stock currently floating at 47.11 USD +1.75 (3.86%). Slightly down on five years ago. (I don't really buy stock.)

Square Enix gave away every Kingdom Hearts game in existence for $40. If that's not consumer friendly I don't know what is. Worth every penny imo

Bethesda. Been fun watching their once mighty throne of fanboys crumble.

EA Sports its in the game

Activision takes number one easily.

Followed by EA and closely by Nintendo

Lmao, incoming!

Activision easily.

And it didn't take long for the usual salty Lemmings to raise their ugly heads. Still can't deal with Sony whipping their asses to a pulp this gen, you guys really are pathetic.

@mandzilla: I have played all of them. Played all of Nintendo’s games from NES to Wii.

But seriously, Nintendo is repacking the same games every gen and their rabid fan base buys them like clock work even if they don’t like the games! They will still defend them.

Nintendo is the biggest crook there is in the game industry. They had the balls to sell their fan base freaking CARDBOARD!

And the fans defended and praised Nintendo while pretending to have fun with cardboard mini games LOL

EA/Ubisoft/Rockstar - microtransaction heaven

Nintendo - Selling overpriced DLC but mask them as amiibo toys. Genius actually.

@ajstyles: Ah right, so you found Galaxy to be a repackaged Sunshine, or Twilight Princess to be a reskinned Wind Waker? Really? They're very different games.

Perhaps you mean Mario Kart and Smash, though I don't see how those series' are anymore recycled than say Gran Turismo, Forza, Tekken, Uncharted etc.

Biggest crook lol, they're one of gaming's greatest innovators. And just as it has always been, Sony can't help but copy them. Just look at that poor excuse for a classic console Sony came out with last year if you want to talk about greedy companies. You can mock Nintendo Labo, but expect a soggy cardboard imitation coming to a PS4 near you soon.

Nintendo.

But GTA VI certainly will not see a penny from me, shitty rockstar.

Twenty-four hours later, and some very interesting discussions here. Anyway, here's my rough tally of the votes and nominations so far:

1. Electronic Arts: 13
2. Activision Blizzard: 10
3. Nintendo: 7
4. Take Two/2K (Including Rockstar): 6
5. Bethesda: 4
6. Ubisoft: 3
7. Warner Bros: 2
8. Atlus, Epic, Nexon, Square Enix, Sony, Tencent: 1 each

I counted multiple votes because it's only a half-serious thread - a sort of black comedy thread for laughing at the depths these publishers will go to. Keep them coming.

Number 3: Take Two / Rockstar

First of the "we can't give stuff away for free in perpetuity" thing is just the worst thing to say to your customers, ever ! But hey they can afford it, because they get so many sales -_-'

But yeah, god forbid your customers actually get something in return for spending all that money on a game they bough what ... 3 times over now ? Can't give stuff away for free now :O

Red Dead Redemption II online is already showing the pure greed from this publisher.

Number 2: EA

Tried to bring the pay to win mechanic from mobile trash games over to AAA gaming in the form of Star Wars Battlefront II

To be honest though, Battlefield V isn't much better. EA is as sleezy as ever and it's a big reason why I'm pretty torn on Battlefield V.

Honestly I'd rather they just bring back premium (season pass) so that we at least get our money's worth.

Number 1: and the overall loser is ... Activision

Thank God for Activision, you can always count on them for being the laziest, sleeziest, greediest publisher in the world.

They don't care for you, they don't care for fun... It's all about the money !

Not only is milking people with lazy yearly rehaseshes enough for them. Not only is different editions with season passes enough for them. Not only is day one DLC enough for them. Not only is dividing playerbases with map packs enough for them.

Nah, they design an entire game mode around opening lootboxes:

And let's not forget about other psychological ways to get people to spend more in their gamezzzzzzzzz

EA have to mentioned with the star wars battlefront fiasco.

EA is still the worst with Activision right behind

However, these two were expected to be greedy but the one wich pains me the most is Bethesda. How much they've fallen in recent months. After all the "support for SP games" bs campaign wich had a cool video and everything they start with the blantant greediness allowed by MP games for all to see. Well, its mainly gamers fault for not supporting games like TEW2, Prey, Dishonored, Wolfenstein and keep wasting money on crap like Fallout Shelter and whatnot... seriously, people keep blaming publishers for their greed but its ALL players fault. We let this happen

Tell that to Digital Extremes. They seem to be doing fine

@Vatusus: Unfortunately releasing games without properly bug tested didn't help Bethesda Single Player games either.(Dishonored,TEW 2 and wolf 2 were in some ways broken at launch.)

When you buy a Bethesda game, you know that it is going to have some stability and performance problems.

So 8-bit Mario is the same as Mario 64 and Galaxy?

Anyway, my answers...

1. EA (haven't learned since SimCity 2013)

2. Namco Bandai (they are becoming EAst at this point, though unlike EA, they make a tad bit more quality)

3. Capcom (they're... somewhat learning on the quality department again, but still, the handling of Street Fighter V and the Mega Man collections put this here)

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. All of them force us to buy their expensive toys to play their games.(They also force us to pay for playing online on their toys.)

I don't recall the last Activision game I bought. Sekiro is coming up, so I guess I will have a rendezvous with them then. But because I have no interest in their products I don't really know how greedy they are.

EA, on the other hand, have had many franchises that I've liked such as Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, Mass Effect, and the Star Wars IP. It's just that they have turned everything to shit with their terrible greed. Dead Space 3 is an almost laughable example. In the game EA introduced weapon modding. To mod your weapons you needed resources and the tool to gather them was the slowest robot in the galaxy. All this to incentivize people to buy micro transactions. Visceral was killed shortly after. It was so f*-ing absurd.

So yeah my vote goes to EA.

@R4gn4r0k: I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard there's even a mission/achievement you get for watching other people open loot boxes at the HQ in COD WW2 lol.

No Bethesda?

They just tried to sell a $20 bottle of rum inside a plastic casing for $80 and are confused as to why people are so unhappy.

Why are they "greedy" exactly? They actually pack what they sell with actual content you can play without paying additional fees or hiding it behind pay/time walls.

Konami. Actually develops gambling machines with a campus in Las Vegas.

Also, MGS survive

@byof_america: A pachinko machine to surpass Metal Gear!

Answer should be either EA or Activision.

The whole point of a corporation is to make money, i.e. be greedy. These are not charitable organizations. They are capitalist corporations with the aim of maximising profits.