EA gets bashed on for Mass Effect 3's ending, Dragon Age 2, and SWTOR not living up to promise, Battlefield 3 and 4 dissipointing the overly vocal Bad Company 2 fans. Dungeon Keeper Mobile :P

Nintendo for not releasing IPs out of Japan and its past casualization of games.

Square Enix rather mediocre FF 13 games. And the terribad All the Bravest, and the mediocre Thief and Hitman Absolution.

Ubisoft DRM Online bullshit among others.

Blizzard, Diablo 3 hate is still strong to this day. And the alienating WOW xpac of MOP.

Capcom became the poster child for On-Disc DLC stuff. And Resident Evil 6, the most expensive game they ever made.

Microsoft and its botched Xbox One presentation.

And now we have Konami, a publisher that was rather under the rader of people's hatred of the AAA scene until the fatal cancelization of Silent Hills. And now people are going as far as saying they are now the worst. All this dirt digging that they treat their employees like filth as if it was never heard of from what companies are capable of at all.

And all of this cycle of negativity and outrage imo began in 2008. That was the year that imo the gaming community became really, REALLY, anal about everything.

Alternatively, it could just be that a lot of those companies have actually been doing a terrible job.

I also blame the rise of youtube personalities..

Yatzhee in perticular. Who dared say that games like Halo 3 and Super Smash Bros. Brawl sucked. Which at the time both franchises were at the height of their popularity.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.49217-Zero-Punctuation-Halo-3?page=1

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.58918-Zero-Punctuation-Super-Smash-Bros-Brawl

The amount of comments showed that back then did gave 2 shits about Halo.

...Seems to me that it's mostly justified? Mindless hysteria is always bad, of course, but if you want to criticize a company for being anti-consumer, I see nothing wrong with it :)

Harassment on the Interwebz. What else is new? The hate is so stronK that they have sold over 30 MILLION copies of D3. 30 MILLION!

I'm just giving a detailed history of bashing so far. Yeah yeah I know I know. But don't doubt that probably another milliom's of people hated Diablo 3's Online requirment.

Error 47 became a meme on the internet.

Maybe the big companies should stop doing stupid stuff. I'm sure the bashing would stop very fast.

That was the year the online DRM machine really got rolling and Spore came out.

Where are you going with this - you don’t want gamers pointing out scorched earth business practices or creative bankruptcy? There’s plenty of positivity going around to balance things out. For example last year the Humble Bundle hit the 50 million dollar milestone in funds raised for charity.

I think the point is not so much consumer awareness, but rather the fact all this complaining is bad because it's poisoning teh gaming culture™ with its negativity. So, let's all complain about it!

Hyperbole an outrage are the official language of the Internet. Everything that is bad becomes "the worst" and what should be a negative but civil and measured response to what many publishers do becomes vitriolic hatred and spiteful bashing. Sadly that's just how internet works.

Everything mentioned by the OP that the publishers are guilty of deserves condemnation. It would just be nice if the "gaming community" could deliver it without acting like a lynch mob.

I made this thread in response to Jim Sterling's latest video of repetitive Konami bashing.

I am my goodness I get it Jim you love Silent Hill so much you suck its dick and now Konami cancels what could have been the worthy successor to Team Silent's games (though I though Downpour was OK)

Do you even now what its like to run a big comapany like EA gaming culture? Most people don't know what its like to be in the shoes of CEOs or producers.

I agree that it seems like outrage and crap like that and people getting angry all the time just results in no one being taken seriously and it does seem silly how "angry" people get over certain things these days. now, having been in on the Operation Rainfall business, I mostly just sent tasteful letters and cocktail swords. But, a lot of those things are things with which people can have legitimate issue but when everything is an outrage it just loses a lot of meaning. As it were, "Gamers really angry about something else." Journalists in our industry also seem to be bucking to be taken seriously and want a Pulitzer so they don't help either. Oh, and these companies could try and keep on top of these things better.

I wouldn't call watching every PC AAA publisher absolutely go to shit and attack their own customers with the aim of inspiring them to hand over more money 'anal'. I'd call that observing fact.

If publishers act better then they'll be regarded better. CDPR for instance is almost revered, even in pirating circles.

I don't like EA as a company or anything but I do know why they make most of their decisions.

Although, I thought Ubisoft was in trouble for making half done games, games with deceptive ads, and all their games are kinda the same? Of course, their DRM stuff was also a problem.

Indeed, I think the last decent game that Blizzard released was WC3, and even that could have been better. Particularly the way they handled those heroes.

It's more or less inevitable that a studio will fall into decay after too many years of success. They get cocky and arrogant and expect that people will continue to pay based upon name alone. Eventually people see that the king isn't wearing any freaking pants and it collapses.