What in you're opinion are the best and worst companies in video gaming at the moment?

Developers and publishers in particular.

I'm interested in what the general consensus is.

INB4 EA

Heh, I think I know what people will be saying for the worst company .
One of the best, in my opinion, is CD Projekt Red, I also like Bioware for the Mass Effect games, although I'm a little wary about them now.

I think the best developer is Bethesda. They might be the best publisher too, but I also like many titles from Ubisoft.

The worst developer of the moment (for the games I care about) is Ascaron. I'm also hating Crystal Dynamics for what they turned the last Tomb Raider into (less tombs and puzzles, more cinematics and shooting). The worst publisher is Square Enix. They fail to deliver and they blame the sales.

Worst: EA, Ubisoft, maybe Activision - not because of their game titles

Best: Obsidian - I'm biased and I can admit it. I just have much success with liking their games, as long as it's a genre/setting I like. Even Obsidian can't make me like South Park.

Generally speaking I don't keep track of most developers/publishers enough to form much of an opinion, these days. I just focus on whether I like a game, now, not the company. And if it's not a MMO - whether I can play it offline.

Note: The inclusion of a developer on either list does not mean I think all their games are brilliant/awful respectively.

Best

CDProjeckt Red: A great developer that knows what it's like to be a gamer. As a result, they create amazing games that arn't riddled with DRM. In many ways, they have some of the best business sense of any game developer out there, realising that you don't fight piracy with DRM, you fight it by creating great games and not being wankers so people will want to pay for them. Also GoG is one of the greatest things currently on the internet, so I'll give them that too.

Larian Studios: Probably one of the more little-known developers out there, I nonetheless love these guys, primarily for the sense of humour and creativity they have in their games. Dragon Commander was one of the most unique games of 2013 and had a great sense of humour. Similarly, Divine Divinity and Divinity 2 had that same sense of humour and willingness to laugh at themselves. How many games out there will let you marry an Undead Princess, and then let you either turn her into a human or give her a robot body to the disgust of her overly-religious people? Original Sin also looks amazing, with the devs giving us almost total freedom in how we want to play the game, and honestly, I'd rather play OS than Diablo 3 anyday.

Arenanet: Not only are they a developer that's willing to have an non-crappy MMO without subscription fees, they're a developer that constantly works to maintain their games for the player. Other developers (looking at YOU Blizzard) will have 4-6 month periods without updating their game, but Arenanet constantly updates their games, adding new content and showing a willingness to shake up their world (not many developers that would blow up their game's hub city). Arenanet's been willing to add ridiculous things into their game that may not always work for all players, but are still a fun challenge (e.g. a World boss that requires a minimum of 150 people working together to beat).

Nintendo: The criticism levelled at Nintendo may at times be justified (e.g. poor third-party support for their consoles), but you can't deny that Nintendo is an amazing developer and publisher when they get their act together. Nintendo's brought us some of the most successful game franchises in history (Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon etc) and continually shown a willingness to experiment and take risks. While some may not like the Wii, we can't deny how interesting the motion controls were at first and the possibilities it offered (although ultimately failed to achieve). Similarly, the concept of a handheld with two screens (one a touchscreen) was similarly innovative. While some may claim Ninty's in decline, we can't deny the amazing additions to gaming they've made over the years.

Pre-Microsoft Rareware: I dont even consider Rare to exist anymore. They're a shadow and a phantom of a once-amazing studio. Rare brought us some of the best platform-adventure games ever made, showing a willingness to experiment and have a load of fun at the same time. They brought us Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie, which stands as two of the best games ever made. And they also brought us Conker's Bad Fur Day, a hilariously fun and crude game that cleverly took everything you thought about kid-friendly adventure games and turned it on its head. It's truely sad that Rare has been destroyed by Microsoft, as they were once one of the best developers in the world IMO.

Worst

Electronic Arts: Do I really need to go into detail? EA is a destructive force in the gaming industry. Thanks to EA we've seen once-great developers collapse into sequel-spamming, cash-cow fostering messes (e.g. Bioware, who I wont include in this list since their problems are largly caused by EA), once beloved franchises run into the ground for the sake of exploiting maximum profit (Battlefield, SimCity, Dead Space) and the creation of true abominations of 'gaming' that are designed solely to screw over the consumer so EA can add a little more to the money pile (Dungeon Keeper). EA is a disgusting company that has almost nothing to redeem it in my eyes. This is a company that upon being declared the Worst Company in America twice (in a worthless poll) outright lied about their practices and tried to blame a 'conservative conspiracy' (due to their alleged support of Gay and lisbian rights in their games) for their unpopularity. In my opinion, they have the reverse midas touch: everything they touch turns [censored].

Blizzard: A controversial inclusion on this list, but justified IMO. In the past, Blizzard may have been the happy little developer creating our beloved Warcrafts and Starcrafts and yes, they even created WoW, the monolithic MMO that still dominates the market today. But Blizzard in recent years is not the same company. Blizzard is a company willing to screw over their franchises and their consumers for the sake of profit. Some of their most heinous crimes include designing Diablo 3 entirely around a Real-Money Auction House that allows Blizzard to take a cut, the continual charging of absurd fees for services like character transfers in WoW, the selling of exclusive mounts in a subscription-based game (a disgusting example of created classism) and the splitting of Starcraft 2 into 3 seperate fully-prices games knowing full well that it means they can gain the maximum profit. Coupled with their in-game design decisions like poorly-designed content in WoW designed solely to lengthen subscriptions (e.g. continual daily quests) and gimmicky additions to their franchises (e.g. Pet Battles), Blizzard isnt a developer I can respect anymore.

Activision: Apart from Robert Kotick being an absolute [censored], Activision is the expert when it comes to running franchises into the ground. For Activision, nothing is sacred except profit. Call of Duty, once a venerable shooter franchise, has been turned into a joke, with yearly releases designed solely to exploit their captive 13 year old market who'll buy the games even if they're [censored]. Simiarly, they happily ran Guitar Hero into the ground so they could exploit it for maximum profit. Activision is run by shareholders for shareholders, with little interest in making good games, but rather solely focused on their profits.

Mojang: Again, probably constroverisal (especially as I play Minecraft on the BGSF server occasionally), but I honestly consider Mojang to be one of the worst developers in the industry. My personal issues with Markus 'Notch' Pearson aside, Mojang is simply a lazy-ass developer that seems to do absolutely nothing. Considering the wealth the Minecraft has brought them, Mojang could have done some brilliant, and truly turned Minecraft into an amazing game. Instead, Minecraft is basically the same game it was during beta with a few extra blocks. Features promised during alpha and beta simply never arrived, until the point where Notch simply dumped the game onto his underlings which resulted in a slight increase in development speed, but still has meant the game has barely changed. Mojang doesn't develop Minecraft, the community does. The modders have added things to Minecraft that are creatively and technically beyond Mojang, the people who are meant to be paid to work on the game. Photos of Mojang's office show ridiculous extravagance that would make Kotick blush, and its clear they spend most of their day doing [censored]-all. The little Indie-Company-That-Could has become a horrificly slow, lazy developer with a man with a moon-sized ego at the helm.

N.B. Bethesda will no dobut pop up on a number of people's "Best" lists, but it wont on mine for a number of reasons. While I still love Bethesda games and consider the Elder Scrolls my favourite franchise, I dislike the direction that Bethesda Game Studios has been carrying the series, and the ridiculous way in which they ported Skyrim from the 360 to the PC (e.g. maintaining that pathetic console UI) was simply ridiculous for the company that brought us Morrowind. Bethesda Softworks wont appear here either for the disgusting way that they screwed over Rogue Warrior and Zombie Studios by firing the original team and turning it into an incredibly bad generic action game. And Zenimax, due to their anti-consumer [censored] with ESO pre-order bonuses, wont be making it here either.

Cryptic/PWE followed by Turbine dwell right at the bottom too.

Another vote for Larian here. They're a really nice, friendly little developer who are approachable, inventive and have a good sense of humour. They actually seem to care about their players who they seem to properly regard as their customers rather than mere consumers.

The worst? I guess anyone controlled by a major publisher.

I was going to mention them as someone I (long ago) used to think of as a Best, but no longer even close. But I don't quite yet put them in a worst category, since I think some of it's Activison pushing them behind the scenes. But I could be wrong, and I certainly don't see them improving, only getting worse, over time. Plus, it hasn't really been "Blizzard" to me for a long time. The people are gone.

There's a lot of small, indie developers I admire a fair bit, even if a game they make isn't my ultimate favorite or something, but they don't have enough product track record for me to put them into a best category. They still need to prove they're more than one-off wonders.

Worst: EA. I will never buy one of their products again. No customer support, treat their customers like dirt and continually make empty promises about fixing broken games that they constantly release. Useless!

Another vote for EA, it seems to me all they want to do is put micro transactions into every game, they rarely make anything original and just destroy great old franchises like Command and Conquer, and every game they have released recently has had problems B4, Sim City etc, also complained about Steam having sales then do it themselves, you just need to look at the recent Dungeon Keeper app game to see what they are all about.

Worst - EA, Blizzard, in some ways Ubisoft

Best - Bethesda, Remedy, CD Projeckt and the old Bioware