Poll of the Day > What game developers will you not buy from?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The actual poll question was:

Are they any publishers whose games you refuse to ever buy, no matter how well-reviewed they are?

It's too long to fit in the topic title box.

Here's my "do not buy... ever" list:

Titus Interactive - everyone should agree with me: Superman 64 was unforgivable

ReadySoft - IMO, Braindead 13 is the only game worse than Superman 64 (if such a thing is even possible.)

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All of them

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Gearbox. Randy Pitchford is a disgusting human being. I literally asked him why a married father was walking around with a USB of a young girl performing sex acts at his request on Twitter(in response to his tweet defending himself about it) and the next day my account was permanently suspended with no explanation. Im confident that was the reason because I dont even use Twitter often at all.

Against my better judgement I bought Borderlands 3 when it was on sale, and the game wasnt even fun IMO, so Im done with them as long as that slimeball is there.

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At this point, most of them, but I don't play a lot of games to begin with anymore.

Since I'm no longer part of the target market my "boycott" is essentially meaningless. Teens and young adults would need to be the ones pushing for change, and with all respect to them that's not going to happen, they have other concerns.

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EA (electronic arts, not early access), Stoneshard devs, Jupiter Hell devs.

EA needs no introduction, but I got Stoneshard the day it was put on Steam in Early Access and it's been incredibly slow doing development-wise. Their fandom is extremely toxic and rage out at anybody who makes suggestions or fair criticism. Almost every answer to "when is X coming?" is "It'll be in a future update". They do questionable things like enter their game in contests against other COMPLETELED games and then get their fans to vote for them, which I didn't think was right. It even won 3rd place! On top of that one of the two main devs who post on the forums is an absolute jerkoff and snarky as hell. I won't give that guy another cent to go buy more tampons with.

I know the "goal" is to make as much money as possible but it shouldn't come at the expense of being a total dick to your players. That's crap.

Jupiter Hell was also released on EA originally and a few of those guys were making official dev replies to negative reviews saying stuff like "the more negative reviews we get, the more unlikely we are to finish this game". Their sound guy also made a lot of childish posts arguing with people who were calling them out on this crappy practice, and then went back and deleted everything he said. The devs eventually learned from their mistakes, and heavily edited all the official replies however the damage was done for many including myself.

Is it any wonder why EA has such a terrible reputation? I mean why not just finish your game and THEN release it? Sure you won't soak your players for more money over a longer stretch of time but your reputation can needlessly suffer like these fine examples above. Now whenever I'm browsing the storefront even if a game looks cool if I see it's in Early Access I just completely skip it.

Mead posted...

I literally asked him why a married father was walking around with a USB of a young girl performing sex acts at his request on Twitter(in response to his tweet defending himself about it)

Probably because he's married!

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Only thing I can think of off the top of my head is Winged Cloud, since the head dude treats artists and devs like slaves.

I don't like companies like EA or Ubisoft, but I don't really like any of their franchises in the first place so it's not an issue.

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There's no one I wouldn't buy from.

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Ubisoft, they make the most vapid, uninspired games and every single game of theirs has the same exact open world game formula.

EA, I don't need to explain them.

EA
I saw the latest Sims expansion pack and noticed the EA logo was no where to be found.. they probably had a meeting where they all agreed the logo probably harmed sales of a game

I hate to say it, but Nintendo are quickly following suit :(

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Blizzard/Activision - Even before all the stuff came out about them, I mostly stopped buying their stuff after 2003 because it didn't appeal to me anymore. The only exception was Diablo 3 (which was more because I had a group of friends who wanted to play it). However, after not playing for 6 months they decided to deactivate my Battle.net account I had for 15 years, making me lose my characters. So I haven't even thought of giving them a cent since.

EA - Battlefield 3 was the last thing I bought from them (again, friends from above wanted to play it). I have a ton of games on Origin, but I didn't pay for any of them. I haven't even logged in to my Origin account since 2019 when I got the free month of EA Access.

Epic - Nothing really interesting from them since UT 2004. UT3 was horrible, and the fact they killed UT4 in favor of Fortnite pretty much sealed the deal that I was never going to give them money again. Haven't even downloaded the Epic store for the free games, have no desire to contribute to their numbers whatsoever.

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EA
Activision-Blizzard
2K Games
Warner Brothers (after the fiasco where their Batman game was badly broken but they said they couldn't fix it b/c they were busy working on the DLC)

I had never actually bought an Ubisoft game before Immortals Fenyx Rising, which was actually fun overall. But I had to put my Switch in Airplane Mode just to play the damn game, lest I get stuck in some screen to log into Ubisoft Connect (no fucking thank you!) w/ no means to get out of it. So yeah, never buying an Ubisoft game again, either.

Naughty Dog because Druckmann makes woke vanity projects instead of actual games because he doesn't use the word fun

Rockstar because they shifted their focus from great single player games to milking kids/teens who use their mommy and daddy's credit cards for all they're worth with GTA and RDR online

People like to dogpile EA but somehow Rockstar gets a pass

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Pretty sure the people at Rockstar would be in a lot of trouble if they were caught milking kids

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Just Ubisoft.

captainjeff87 posted...

Druckmann makes woke vanity projects

garbage take

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bethesda

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Actiblizz: I wasn't exactly buying many of their games to begin with, but WC3 Reforged turned me off of buying any of their games for a good, long while. If I can't trust them not to break a game 15 years after I bought it, I see no reason to give them any more money. And then the whole sexual assault thing came out and reinforced the decision, since I really don't want to support executives that are facilitating that.

Ubisoft: Again, I wasn't buying much from them anyway, but they're also trying their best to emulate the Vatican, so I'm not supporting that.

EA: Destroying studios left and right, blatantly exploiting children and mental illness for monetary gain, and generally just epitomizing everything that's wrong with the AAA industry. This is less of a deliberate boycott and more a matter of them just not making anything I want to subject myself to, but I generally resent them enough to be wary of anything with their name on it.

That's all that immediately comes to mind.

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Far-Queue posted...

There's no one I wouldn't buy from.

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No. I'm not ideological. If somebody makes something that interests me to make me want to buy it, I'm going to buy it, generally even if I think the people involved are deplorable (although that might factor into the likelihood of me buying something, where the more I dislike somebody, the better something as to be, but that's more of non-games thing)

The biggest thing keeping me from buying new games is the awareness of my queue and how slowly I've been playing games lately. But most entertainment I've toned down on over the years, where I mostly just look at lectures, biographies, documentaries, etc, on YT. When I have free time, I like to spend it learning or on something potentially productive.

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I'm more apt to start avoiding companies whose bad decisions are resulting in their games becoming crap (Bioware, Bungie) or because a company adds elements to games that make me find the games repulsive (EA) than I am because I object to the behavior of a company or its employees in the real world.

If I took strong stances against employers exploiting employees or engaging in shady business practices, I'd have to give up modern society entirely and go live in the wilderness.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd have to give up modern society entirely and go live in the wilderness.

Not the worst idea tbqh

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adjl posted...

Actiblizz: I wasn't exactly buying many of their games to begin with, but WC3 Reforged turned me off of buying any of their games for a good, long while. If I can't trust them not to break a game 15 years after I bought it, I see no reason to give them any more money. And then the whole sexual assault thing came out and reinforced the decision, since I really don't want to support executives that are facilitating that.

EA: Destroying studios left and right, blatantly exploiting children and mental illness for monetary gain, and generally just epitomizing everything that's wrong with the AAA industry. This is less of a deliberate boycott and more a matter of them just not making anything I want to subject myself to, but I generally resent them enough to be wary of anything with their name on it.

these, with basically the same response

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Gearbox

As long as Randy Pitchford is running things, they will never see any of my money.

EA: Do I need to explain why? Worst gaming company ever.

Acti-Blizz: I used to be a fan, but with all the stuff that's happened since BFA I'm just past my breaking point with the company.

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Far-Queue posted...

Not the worst idea tbqh

It would be for me, I loathe nature.
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Far-Queue posted...

There's no one I wouldn't buy from.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It would be for me, I loathe nature.

You say this but we know what you do with those pine cones, PO.

We. Know.

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Sorry - I didn't realize this was against companies that disrespected nature. I thought this was against companies that made bad games.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

It would be for me, I loathe nature.

Do you loathe nature more than you loathe humans though? I find that hard to believe.

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Far-Queue posted...

You say this but we know what you do with those pine cones, PO.

We. Know.

Why would you ever need pine cones when Bad Dragon exists?
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Bad Dragon brand pine cones

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Naughty Dog, Hello Games and Quantic Dreams.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Why would you ever need pine cones when Bad Dragon exists?

PO lifting the curtain a bit itp

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