Gothic. (3 had its issues, but community patches made it quite playable so as of now it isn't that bad. Everything that came out after it... different story).
Heroes of Might and Magic (4 and 6. They may have some good things about them, but not enough to outweigh the drawbacks. I know some people don't like 5 as well, but IMO the only problem with it was about the graphic part).
Disciples (3 could have been received better if it didn't have "Disciples" in its title and had less code in its bugs).
Max Payne (3. It severely lacks the ability to steal cars and for some reasons has two words in its title instead of three. Should've been called Max Theft Auto).
Stronghold (1+crusader were good. The rest... is silence).

And we shall see what the next Fallout (4? Online?) will be like.

Well, the bank also doesn't publish, market or do anything else for a game. One of the reasons developers choose publishers aside from money, is because the publishers have experience/expertise in distributing/promoting a game which the developers might lack. And no, the IP doesn't automatically land into the publisher's hands, it's all about the deals. Consider Croteam for a moment. Despite deals with various publishers over the years, they still have control of the Serious Sam IP.

Because most small studios are not filled with cynical lawyers perhaps? And what if the publisher refuses to write down their verbal promises? Those are usually made after the devs are already bind to contracts that they can't break without severe consequences so all they get from the refusal is the advance warning for their employees to seek new jobs as soon as possible.

As stated above, the developers are not the ones with resources to have the best legal advise where as the publishers have until recently been the gatekeepers that dictate the terms as the modern games tend to cost too much for any startup developer to produce on his own.

Crowd funding has evened out the playing field somewhat, but now the devs and gamers need to adapt to it by having the former starting to polish even the pre alpha material while the latter needs to learn that in the old model of game development they never got to see any screenshots that were still missing textures or effects.

Right, and the publishers already have working relationships with retailers too.

As you said, some studios sign with publishers and still retain all of the rights. I'm thinking that's the case with Project Eternity, or maybe it's Wasteland II, I can't remember. I'm pretty sure it's one of those popular kickstarter games. I recall reading a dev blog where they stated that they were working with one of the big publishers for distribution, maybe Deep Silver..

That's one good thing about DD with PC gaming. Valve and others are providing a venue for studios to sell their games without necessarily having to spend a lot on promotion and manufacturing and distribution, and whatever other costs typically involved

It seems that right now is probably as good a time as there ever was for a small studio to develop games and grow.

Whether it's "what a company does" or not, this does nothing but add my contempt for Bethesda.

If that's the case then so be it, but if studio heads are agreeing to contracts without understanding what's printed, then they are asking for negative repercussions. I doubt most out there have much sympathy for those scenarios.

I suspect there's more to it than that. Rare instances yes, but I would like to think that that isn't too common. It seems more plausible to me that the studios are signing the farm away because of the precarious position that they've found themselves in, or what they have forecast themselves to be in, if they don't sign it.

That brings me to the notion that the studios don't have enough assets to support their ambitious projects and make payroll for any number of reasons. And that notion brings me to what I said earlier. Maybe too many studios are taking on projects too large and need to scale it back to break away? This discussion has reminded me of 38 Studios.

Yep, that's why stuff like Minecraft flopped so hard...

Dice roll first person combat. As in you have to look at the thing to attack it...and it still rolls a die to see if you hit, even though you were already aiming straight at it. If the thing blocks or dodges, that's fine, animate that. However using a dice roll along with a mechanic where you already have to aim is sloppy at best. I love Morrowind to death, but that was already barely acceptable combat when it came out. Now it's a just plain sloppy system, ie the new systems are improved and still have growth to them.
That's not to say the new systems couldn't use some depth, like using a Chivalry type combat system that would maintain the slash/thrust/chop power on each weapon like Morrowind had, that would be great. Thank god the dice rolls to hit are gone though. Rolling to hit is for turn based, not action games. Also would like spears and the other interesting weapons back. On the other hand thank god Skyrim finally made magic feel more badass (and made being a pure mage more possible, Morrowind and Oblivion you almost always had to start as more of a "Battle Mage" and move toward pure mage). I want the Spellmaking altars back though.

I agree the level scaling shouldn't exist as it is...I hate level scaling, always will. Areas also need to change over time though. It makes sense if I kill all the bandits in an area, maybe some trolls or other wildlife would move in, level scaling done like that would be nice. Otherwise going back into "low level" zones would be boring as hell no matter what you were doing there. No fun just waltzing through and murdering mudcrabs or low level bandits.

As for Oblivion's less interesting terrain, keeping with lore it was always a lush foresty area. Yeah it's generic, but it's what they already established Cyrodiil to be. The ruins and Oblivion gates were a good way to break it up and get you a different feel.
They blended it with Skyrim, Valenwood, Hammerfell and Blackmarsh quite well for the future (Elsweyr needed to be a bit more jungle-y and some desert in the distance would have been a nice addition, but you couldn't see terribly far into Elsweyr). They got a nice natural flow to the terrain. In a lot of ways that was better than Morrowind where you walk over a hill and everything is completely different. Ashlands to lush greenery in but a few steps is a little too cut and dry realistically. At least going from forests to plains to snowy mountains felt a little more natural in Cyrodiil and Skyrim. At the same time though Vvardenfell was supposed to be sort of unnatural alien and weird, and the sudden terrain changes aided that feel so it wasn't really too bad.

Quest design wise, I have to knock it a bit here too. Morrowind was littered with fetch quests...I couldn't turn a corner without getting like 3 more fetch quests. They were a little easier to ignore because they eventually ended up so many pages back in the journal that I'd forget about them, rather than sitting in a log.
But for every interesting quest, there was at least a dozen "Go get me mushrooms" Oblivion and Skyrim are the same way. You have the super fun stuff like the final few Thieves Guild quests in Oblivion. Getting Azura's star in Skyrim, the Oasis stuff in FO3...fun quests like that...but for every one of them there is 12 fetch quests sitting in your log. (Same goes for the old Fallout games)
This seems to be a pervasive problem with RPG games in general though, not just Bethesda.

Dialogue in the newer games is a little more limited because it's all voiced, not just the main NPCs. So they're paying actors for a lot if they make too many unique lines for merchants etc. I can let the repeated lines go on that one.
A lot of the quest and story writing definitely wasn't as in depth as Morrowind either, but Morrowind had next to no voice acting, which leaves a lot more room for those huge paragraphs of deep background text when you aren't paying someone to read them 25x each until they get them right. Also most of the "Gaming" audience already gets impatient with RPG text as it is. So they have to find a balance between tons of background, and just getting to the point. While you and I might prefer a lot of background info and fluffy text, there's probably 5 more people that would prefer the NPC just cut to the chase. They still have to make a profit, or the whole series goes kaput.

Sorry, but this almost sounds like small studios and startup devs live under a rock until they decide to go into game development, thus have absolutely no clue or intel on how things work in the industry and what the story and rumours about each publisher are.

As I already said, if a publisher refuses to put their promises in writing, then you can't rely on them as there's no guarantee (i.e. legal binding) that the pub will see them through. And you don't need the best legal counselling to understand that a business contract is a legally binding paper that will result in unpleasant consequences if you don't keep your part of the deal.
Starting a studio means running a business and I read, more often than not, stories about how they have no idea what that entails which seems to cause a lot of their problems in many cases.

Of course they should dream big, but not lose sight of the fact that without any means of their own it's wiser to start small or at least smaller than some do. The industry is a battlefield and success rarely comes over night. Is it really such a bad concept to do your best to keep the risk of you getting driven out of business (and into personal debt in some cases) as low as possible at your early steps?
It's sad how start-up devs and small studios seem to fail at protecting themselves from the beginning thus leaving plenty of playground for publishers to screw them in all ways possible. This is not meant in defence of the pubs, I just sometimes feel that the little guy needs to take responsibility and do their best to not end up as the irrelevant tiny guy.

And coming back to the Interplay - Bethesda disaster, I still can't fathom how Herve Caen thought/ believed that they company could deliver on all the requirements (that is taking into account the state Interplay was in and that they had no concrete plan already in place) and signed a contract that basically was "deliver or die" in all aspects and terms. Did he really need top-notch legal counselling to understand the huge risk he took?

Just my 2c.

I'm on the other end of it. I'm one of the handful of "nut jobs" (as we've been called, among less nice things) who cancelled my steam account over that TOS change a few years back, so I will literally never buy another Steam anything.

The ironic part was that it was barely a week before that when I finally said "you know, maybe I'm just being paranoid. Yeah, if I lose my account, I'm out everything I paid, but they've been pretty stand-up for years now. Might as well give them a chance." Talk about "Schmuck Bait (TvTropes Warning)."

So I was only out about $70 total, but AFAIC, Valve is permanently at EA's level now. The good part is that it makes me fanboy that much harder over GOG. :)

Yeah, even though Linux support is quite attractive, GOG is still miles better in my book, since it is DRM-free, and not the DRM empire that Steam is. (Which is why I STILL don't have a Steam account)

And I guess you could say that Linux is *unofficially* supported here, with all kinds of tips and tricks given by community members in GOGmixes and forum posts and what have you, to explain how to get the games working in Linux. Not to mention I actually HAVE a lot of the games working here. ;)

Yep, a lot of reasons I don't use steam powered engines.

Minecraft's success was one of the main factors that proved to many aspiring game developers that there is a way to succeed without being slaved under a publisher's boot.

Game development is a rather new profession and I would guess that even today not many starting developers have any got any degree on it. Publishers on the other hand are very skilled at suppressing anyone not willing to commit a professional and financial suicide from telling to the public how badly they were threated. They can pressure gaming "journalists" to not give their games bad reviews, now imagine what they can do to someone who they can actually sue for leaking "vital business information"?

In the IGN's article about Prey 2 that whole verbal promise about giving the devs more time seems to be made long after the development had begun and possibly after Bethesda started to reject milestones. Even if the devs would have called the bluff early they were already obligated to finish the game. Surely they could have negotiated better terms before signing in the first place? I would not be surprised if the terms presented to them were an industry standard that usually works just fine if the parties involved are acting on good faith. Which is a expectation that Bethesda/Zenimax apparently exploits as much as they can within the letter of the law.

One more or less serious theory at the NMA forums was that he was actually counting at being able to sue Bethesda/Zenimax for basically acting like he would himself have done. For a while that seemed like this would be his greatest accomplishment ever until it was pointed out that the trial was not to be heard in front of a jury, so any sob stories about a poor little Interplay being unfairly bullied by big and powerful Bethesda were now going to be far less effective.

They can pressure the gaming journalists because they are often a source of their income, advertising revenue. The gaming media and publishers are in bed together.

Everyone commenting on developer - publisher relations needs to read the following:

The Ties That Divide

Contract Deal Points

Royal tease

G.O.D.'S Ten Developer Commandments