Is Take-Two the least scummy large publisher?

This is correct.

Furthermore, I would buy a 2KBOX.

Ehhh...

I don't know. They might just be really good at covering things up.

I'll give it a yes. So far they have been the least outwardly scummy company as of late. However, I wouldn't put some scum thing past them, and to be fair the new MLB was supposed to be garbage (friends said so, and they're annual buyers)

I know, right. 2K were probably just about to release a bust of Elizabeth when 'torsogate" hit.

But seriously, are we forgetting about Duke Nukem Forever.

I'd say they're not scummy at all.

Square is alright. As a publisher they've been pretty great this gen for the most part.

And yeah, Take-Two is great too.

Take Two is pretty okay in my book.

Isn't Take Two the only publisher to avoid the online pass craze? I've bought plenty of their games and I've never once had to input a 25 character code that lets me enjoy the game I paid for.

Duke Nukem Forever isn't 2K's fault, though. They had that clusterfuck of an albatross hanging on them and they had to make money on it somehow.

From what I've heard, yeah.

Ken Levine said that 2K, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, left Irrational completely unmolested during the developments of both of their most recent releases. Even intermittent oversight is rare these days.

They'd probably make a lot more money if they were a bit scummier. Gamers always reward the publisher that treats them the worst.

In the run up to the launch of BioShock Infinite, Ken Levine described 2K's style of publishing as something like placing bets on certain developers who have proven themselves as highly competent creative visionaries, giving them enough money and time to fully realize their projects with minimal external meddling in the development process.

Capcom early this generation was on route to be my favourite publisher but they pissed it all away. Right now yeah I'd say Take-Two is the least scummy of the big dogs.

Is Duke Nukem Forever really their fault? Yeah, they published the game, but Gearbox had to patch that thing together to just put it out and are the ones who had to finish it. Every publisher has their terrible games they probably wish they didn't publish. It just so happens that a lot of their games meet critical acclaim and has one of the most critically and financially successful franchises in gaming, the GTA series.

@mrpandaman: Well, to an extent, it's their fault; they didn't exactly have to pick up the slack from 3D Realms. Anyway, it does seem like a bit of a double standard to praise them for "putting out some real winners", but then completely disassociate them from Duke Nukem Forever.

The development of LA Noire was pretty fucked up from what I hear. No one's perfect.

"Anything done by Rockstar"

lol. Yes, it's true - anything with the Rockstar logo it is immediately overrated.

Except Max Payne 3, apparently, which nobody wanted.

Torsogate! Hey, remember when objectifying women in video games was a thing? But then a bunch of journalists jumped on an easy headline story and it all went away.

@msavo said:

I still find it hilarious how if Capcom (as a developer) wanted to add gems to a fighting game to allow players to customize their playstyle of a character, you would do it exactly like Divekick does it, AND IT WOULD BE GREAT.

Instead, Capcom (as a publisher) thought "Oh god, we need all that DLC money", and made gems DLC and preorder bonuses, and everyone basically told them to fuck off.

Yeah I have great deal of respect for 2K.. I mean who would've put somenthing like X-COM EU and not make it a lame shit show free to play like... lets say Age of Empires Online.

@mikkaq said:

Take-Two was right about that studio being able to put out an interesting game. It turns out the management of Team Bondi was rotten, but I'd hardly call L.A. Noire a bad investment, nor would I really consider their implosion to be Take-Two's fault.

Take Two's scummy period was a while ago, around the time when their CEO was named worst CEO in America. They had Hot Coffee, insider trading and Rockstar Wives. Both Duke Nukem Forever and LA Noire were problems that originated from that era as well. MLB is a money loser that they are contractually obligated to put out every year so you can't really blame them that it's shit. Any money they spend on it is going to be wasted.

Their current leadership seems pretty good at keeping consumers happy. Now if only they could post a profit.

Let us be fair with this one: Duke Nukem Forever was a game that had several year's worth of created and scrapped content and ideas as well as a still-existing fanbase that wanted to play it along with another group of people with an inevitable curiosity in seeing how it turned out. All that really needed to happen was for a developer - in this case Gearbox - to put the pieces together into some kind of halfway coherent whole, make their adjustments here and there, and release it. Even if the game sucked, I don't think that Gearbox and Take-Two put a ton of money into it, at least not compared to something like Borderlands 2 or the long development time that Bioshock Infinite had. Duke Nukem Forever was a good business move, and I wouldn't bet that it was ever intended to be anything more than that.

Also to be fair with this one, LA Noire was published by Rockstar and most of the reports of issues in the studio were Team Bondi's fault. Wasn't there one particular boss or lead designer or something who was a real dickhead?

Anyway, I'll stand by my "I don't know statement" but I'll add that I don't know of any specific incidents that are Take-Two's fault, directly or indirectly. They seem to be in good standing with their customers and they regularly release pretty good games. I also don't hear of an occasional ex-employee that goes haywire and posts shit about them all over the internet. So I guess by lack of evidence for any possible misdoings, I'll give them a "yeah, all right" stamp.

I never really followed 2K much until I came across Borderlands, but I guess I'm alright with saying that about what they've been doing recently.

That's just one of the many things lately Capcom has done wrong. Man Street Fighter X Tekken could have been huge! Such wasted potential and the poor reception/sales has probably cancelled Tekken X Street Fighter.

In the sense that the last time I remember T2 being in the headlines was them refusing to be bought by EA right before GTA4? Sure. But least scummy? No. Personally i'd give that award (?) to WBG. They might not publish the best games but they take chances and generally do a decent job of advertising their products without gimping them too much with pre-order incentives.

Take Two seems to be one of the most willing (if not the most) to allow developers to take their sweet time when they're making something really big. Would EA or Activision let RockStar take five years to make a new GTA? Would Ubisoft let Irrational take the same time to make BioShock Infinite? Maybe, I feel like Ubisoft is a little less scummy than the others, but that may just be my French-Canadian heritage speaking.

I dunno!

Take-Two doesn't allow mod tools, so they can fuck off

@believer258: You realize a lot of investment money that 3D realms got was from Take Two, right? I mean, there was this whole law suit about it and everything. =P

Anyway, ya I like modern Take Two. They keep their heads down, and only show up to promote a new game and the games lately have been the focus of anything surrounding Take Two (even when it's a game people get mad about, for example XCOM which was renamed to something I forget now- we'll call it XCOM the FPS). This is what most big companies should do, and I respect what Take Two currently is.

I really hope GTA V turns it around for them, though. They almost never make a profit (although I think Bioshock infinite has been somewhat profitable if I recall). I really like the games 2k/Take Two tend to come out with (always have, really- even those crazy FMV games they were heavily behind in the 90s).

Ya, they've made some mistakes as a company, and some were pretty shitty, but they seem to be alright at the moment as far as their management goes.

Yeah, apart from Gearbox (though I would be totally in for a real Brothers in Arms sequel) and the sports games I am interested in pretty much every 2K game. This is certainly due to their support of more off beat titles, would a full price turn based strategy game really get made by any other company. Their willingness to invest in new ideas is refreshing.

As a aside NIS America takes the prize for the best small publisher for me, if only for being the great white hope for SMT games being published in Europe. It says something that Soul Hackers getting a EU release, let alone being only 5 months after the US version, seems almost miraculous.

Hmmm...they are up there. Bethesda is also pretty good I think.

Everything I hear about Bethesda (Zenimax) suggests to me that they're pretty cutthroat, look at how they threw Human Head under the bus with Prey 2.

They are the only publisher I can think of offhand that has consistantly prioritized quality over quantity, which is the reason why they are the only game company I own stock in. However, according at least to Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto, they have quite a history of piss-poor management, which is why the instant the quarterly results for GTAV are posted I'm cashing out. But yeah, in general they seem like a pretty decent establishment in an industry full of cutthroats.

Ha. I'm doing the same thing.

Great minds think a like.

=p

QFT!

This.

If they bring GTA 5 to pc not as a broken unoptimised mess then they pretty much the greatest big publisher ever.

They seem to be one of the best. Probably has something to do with the security they get from their big titles but I'd like to think they're run but cool duders.

@savage said:

...hence why I've always had confidence in the XCOM shooter game they've had in development for a while.

Yah, I really like square right now. Aside from the "We dont want to talk about sex, But in the mean time, do you want to take pictures of the Lara Croft cosplayers?"

But the games they put out are quality. Even the PC ports. I have not been disappointed with any of their games in 2 or 3 years.

Do we really know what happened there?

I dislike the implication that all large publishers are "scummy".

Regardless, Take-Two seem fine.

Bethesda comes to mind.

I dunno about that. Square can be pretty scummy. Remember that iOS Final Fantasy game All the Heroes (or something like that). Or the japanese language pack for 30$ on Steam. They can be great but they can also be pretty aweful

It's a real shame that the reaction to SFxT was so caustic. I agree that the DLC gems was bad, the fact that some of the paid for gems are better is super gross, but I also think that the whole DLC on the disc fiasco was really overblown and reactionary. That coupled with the problems that the game initially had with too much block stun all over the place, it seems like a lot of people have just totally written that game off. Which really bums me out, because the 2013 version of that game is really great.

I am cautiously optimistic that the reason why TxSF seems to have gone dark is just because they decided to retool for next gen or something. I really want to see that game. I am immensely interested in what Harada and his team would actually do with those characters. What does a more realistic Chun Li look like? Which SF characters translate well to a Tekken game? Would having more than 2 moves make Guile's head explode? I think Gen would be a really cool Tekken style character. I'd also love to see them try to balance taking Street Fighter characters to a Tekken extreme while still trying to keep the core of those characters. I'm also really interested to see what a next gen Namco fighter looks like. Tekken Tag 2 and Soul Calibur V already look really nice considering the age of the hardware and the necessity of a constant 60fps.

Well this got way off topic... Yeah, 2K are alright by me. WOO STREET FIGHTER X TEKKEN IS GREAT

i wish i could afford the stock :\

@kittyvondoom said:

What about that ping-pong (excuse me, table tennis) game, Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis?

NBA 2k13 is a refreshing sports title, no online pass or microtransactions shoved down your throat, they let their developers take time on games, I brought Max Payne 3 for $5 on the Xbox Live sale so they number one in my books, Bethesda up there as well.

I brought stock in Activision after Call of Duty 4, would of got a good return to if they didn't spend 775 million freaking dollars on a party at E3.

Yeah, sure, why not. I would say Konami are alright as well. Or Ubisoft.

Take a look at past trends first. From what I've seen (although I haven't kept track of game company stocks since 2007) the stock peaks a day or two before a product is released. It even dropped after the smash hit that was San Andreas.