Game Companies that respect their customers

[SgtJon117]

I'd argue Riot Games tries to be as player centric as possible. They give the game to you free and have to prove to you that your money is worth spending on their skins and boosts.

 

[El Luck]

I was mostly basing my opinion on their stance towards DRM and the fact that they didn't try to gouge anyone for DLC.

If you don't like the witcher that is fine. I was mostly thinking about companies that didn't treat their customers like thieves with terrible DRM schemes (ubisoft) or awful DLC cashins.

I have no problem with DRM, as long as it isn't SUPER inconvenient like Ubisoft's "always-online" DRM or stays on your PC if you uninstall the game like SecuROM.

As for DLC, it doesn't bother me. A company should be allowed to make as much content as they want release it as fast as they want, and charge a reasonable amount of money for it, as long as it isn't needed to have a full base game.

Beyond that CdProjekt's "we wont use DRM EVER" thing I find to be a terribly transparent marketing tactic that abuses the well known customer hatred of DRM in order to gain popularity.

It is kinda underhanded.

Wait, so not treating your customer like a potential criminal is a transparent marketing tactic?

Anywho on topic:
Valve
CD Projekt
uh...well to me that really is it. I would love to have Blizzard on this list but...I really can't anymore, which is a shame because their games were among the first I remember playing.

 

[veloper]

You should try Witcher 2. I also thought the first Witcher was crap, but the Witcher 2 solves pretty much every problem in the first. It's almost feels like they were made by two different companies.

Also, I don't really see how making a bad game means you disrespect your customers...

I tried The Witcher 2, it was slightly better then the first but still suffer from MANY of the 1st problems.

Which ones? Honestly, I thought it suffered from different problems, but none of the problems of the first game.

Also, going back on your first post, I don't see how saying "we won't use DRM ever" is underhanded. CDProjekt realizes consumers don't like DRM, so they promise not to put it in their product. It's like advertising good gas mileage on a car. If you think that's underhanded, clearly you've never been exposed to underhanded marketing

It will only be underhanded if CDPR or their publishers use DRM for their future products anyways. Still good sofar.
Other than that CDPR are good to their customers in the form patch support and giving updates and enhanced editions for free instead of turning them into DLC.

Only point against CDPR is how the games work out of the box, before the patches get released, but that holds true for the majority of game companies nowadays.

CDPR should top this list.

 

[OManoghue]

Honestly most do. There's a couple publishers like EA, WB, and THQ who think we're all poor or pirates so they add clunky DRM and online passes. But on the dev side they seem to like us for the most part.

VALVe
CD Projeckt Red
Gearbox

 

[razor343]

Jowood? As far as I know they've never screwed anyone over, and they had a very good track record with their games (Gothic 2 NOTR was a standalone expansion pack that contained all of the game world + a whole new landmass to explore and quest in, I'm not sure about its pricing at the time but I imagine it was reasonable)

 

[SajuukKhar]

Valve
Bethesda
Arena Net
Gearbox
Obsidian

Disagree. If Bethesda respected their customers they'd hire a quality assurance/bugfixing team. Obsidian would have forced the issue when they made new vegas as well.

yes because over 8 patches that fix bugs in 5 months time is them having no bug fixing team?

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

Gearbox and Bethesda come to mind as do Naughty Dog.

Valve only respects it's PC gamers. Their hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of console gamers? We get the shaft every time. MS/Sony are only partially to blame but because they're gaming's sacred cow nobody is allowed to criticism them.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Gearbox and Bethesda come to mind as do Naughty Dog.

Valve only respects it's PC gamers. Their hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of console gamers? We get the shaft every time. MS/Sony are only partially to blame but because they're gaming's sacred cow nobody is allowed to criticism them.

valve would rather stick up for tier belief that people should get DLC fore free then compromise their integrity and sell out to the Mico$soft and $ony pay masters.

 

[SajuukKhar]

"We promise from now on to never do anything that fucks you, our customers, in any way. This will be something that basically nobody who cares about customers will be able to deny is a good thing. We do this because we know it's not worth it anyway, and we respect you."

"LOL LOL FUCKING SNEAKY BASTARD NAZI IN DISGUISE, YOU AIN'T FOOLING ME, JEWHATER!"

I don't know man, there's suspicion and there's paranoia...

SajuukKhar sounds like an anti-conformist...Do my captcha and "Run the gauntlet"!

Na its more of the

"we are going to exploit the users over stated hatred of DLC t sell more copies of the game."

CDprojekT is doing for the same reason other companies but DLC on their games, because they think it will make them more money.

they dont actually give tow shits about anyone, all they care about is the money, like all other game companies.

 

[Sexy Devil]

Really? Why?

Because I don't think Witcher is that good of game, GASP BLASPHEMY!!!!

It felt like it was a throwback to the older days of RPGs but it contained mot of the PROBLEMS with old RPGs instead of most of the good things old RPGs had.

Also it tired WAY to hard to sell on sex, people say Bioware tried to sell Me2 on sex because of Miranda's suit and Me3 because Ashley let her hair down, but Witcher had sex cards.

It wasn't even tasteful either, at least in Me you had to somewhat work for it, in Witcher it was like

Random girl: wanna have sex?
Geralt: sure

It was like everything you could do wrong about sex in-game personified.

Good point. I have some thoughts about Valve, since they are so much involved with DRM, but yeah, other than that they are always thoughtful of the gamers and careful not to offend them.

Valve games have no DRM.

Just pointing out that they fixed that in Witcher 2; you pretty much only bang Triss once, walk in on Philipa having sex once, then it's done. Still, the question was if there were any developers who respect their customers and CDProjektRed certainly treat us well, regardless of your personal feelings.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

Gearbox and Bethesda come to mind as do Naughty Dog.

Valve only respects it's PC gamers. Their hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of console gamers? We get the shaft every time. MS/Sony are only partially to blame but because they're gaming's sacred cow nobody is allowed to criticism them.

valve would rather stick up for tier belief that people should get DLC fore free then compromise their integrity and sell out to the Mico$soft and $ony pay masters.

Nobody is expecting to get anything for free and they've already charged for almost all of the Left 4 Dead DLC, invalidating your argument.

And that reasoning makes absolutely no sense at all: "We don't want you to have to pay for anything so we're not going to give you anything at all."

 

[Iwata]

Valve, to anyone using them as an example, locked me out of my Steam account without explanation, and robbed me (there's no other word) of hundreds of ? worth of legaly bought games.

When I asked for a justification, I got none. Valve is the main reason I gave up PC gaming and lost all faith in digital gaming.

Even if this is true, because I find it hard to believe there's no reaason, you're still only about 1 in a million and for that million everything works very well. Although I personally like steam, all the games I love I want to have physically.

I've explained it here before, but I'll do it again, for some context:

I used Steam a lot. The Orange Box, Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, Dawn of War II, Empire: Total War and a lot of others, all games I played through Steam. And all games that I bought myself, mind you.

I moved houses, and when I tried to log back in, after a couple of months absence, I was told my account had been suspended. Every single attempt I made at getting an explanation was met with either a blank reply, or a copy-pasted reply of the previous e-mail that simply said, and I am quoting here, "your account has been suspended. Thank you." This went on for a couple of months. I suspected hacking, so I offered to send photos of my games (they were all physical copies, not digital purchases) and their respective cd-keys. I never got a reply to that, despite insisting on the point.

And yeah, I may be "only one in a million", but I have to say, as far as customer experiences go, Valve is at the bottom of my barrel. Other companies may have shoddy practices, but hey, at least they didn't steal my fucking games!

By contrast, Spark, a company that makes games that get constantly bashed, replied to an e-mail of mine both complementing and criticizing their work with a bag of goodies, including a PS3 game I had mentioned in the mail that I was trying to find, a graphic novel, a duffel bag, and more. THAT is customer appreciation.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Valve and Atlus.

Valve tends to be good to the customers (my account got locked due to me losing my validation email, and they got me back my access in a matter of two days), and Atlus...Yeah Atlus usually makes the fans freakin love them.

They recently went "Yeah, some people have been asking for a reprint of Radiant Historia. If this post gets X amount of likes, we make another print run. *next day* ....Oh wow. I guess there's demand! You asked for it! We're making more copies!"

There's a reason their newsletter thingy is called "the Atlus Faithful". XD

Captcha: Barking mad. ....Yeah, that's Atlus in a nutshell. XD

 

[Iwata]

What you're saying is something that have always worried me a lot, and it's a big reason I get frustrated whenever I hear and see all the praise that Steam and Valve get. I'm still positively inclined towards them, but it almost pisses me off that people won't acknowledge some pretty freaking major issues. And when Gabe Newell talks bullshit about providing good service and shit, nobody questions him about it. They just take his word for it and think "well hey, Steam is immensely successful, I guess that proves it then. Case closed!".

That is pretty much my own conclusion. I was the first on my gaming circle to sing the praises of Steam while everyone else was reluctant, and ironicaly, I was the one that got screwed.

It seems to me that they thought, as the other user said, that me being "one in a million" was Steam's own reaction. "Hey, people love us, this guy can't make any problems for us, screw him!"

 

[EHKOS]

Rocksteady is OK, except for the DLC front.
Naughty Dog and Insomniac love their customers.
EDIT:How could I forget Atlus!

 

[elscotty]

In all my years as a Gamer, I have never had anything bad to say about Valve. They have always been the benchmark of excellence for the industry in my eyes. I have a soft spot in my heart for Gearbox and Bethesda as well. All great companies that put out some top notch product.