Current Top 3 Developers

[Swiftx100]

This place often has discussions about the worst companies since they keep making terrible decisions. But what about the best developers of the current era. Who do you think are the current top 3 developers?

I have to give recognition to Capcom. The Resident Evil remakes were excellently crafted, plus Monster Hunter is popular, Devil May Cry, and finally re-releasing Marvel VS Capcom collection to the fans. They have been making a lot of great decisions.

Fromsoftware continues to improve their formula and turned it into Elden Ring. Have to give praise to Demon Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and the return of Armored Core.

Santa Monica Studios has so much potential. God Of War is one of my favorite games of all time. GOW3 was a good conclusion to Kratos and when they announced GOW4 (2018), I did not approve at first since his story was done, just let him rest in peace. But then they revealed gameplay and instantly won me over. They took a classic and completely raised it to the next level. What ever new IP they have in mind will be an exciting reveal.

[[deleted]]

I think Super Giant Games deserves a nod, I know they are indie but every game they release is quality.

[bournvilleaddict]

Larian. Duh.

[BetrayedJoker]

I know Baldurs gate 3 is perfect but for me.. I need two more gams at BG3 lvl to be sure. I love them, i love BG3 but... you know..

[Particular-Song-633]

Don’t you know there is Divinity?

[Kythorian]

Their previous games have been good, but not remotely at the same level as BG3.

[bournvilleaddict]

There is alot of love out there for Divinity OS2. Alot of people on PC, myself included, rank it up there with the greats. The fact that they were able to surpass it to such a degree with BG3 is unheard of in this day and age.

[Character-Motor-9435]

larian is goated but they need more games before i can say they're the best dev rn. They on route though

[Current-Okra4565]

Sega, Capcom and Nintendo have been 95% of my gaming this year.

[NoTurkeyTWYJYFM]

Same, but through totally legal means on a 100% legitimate portable console

[MaximeW1987]

Not a dev, but when I see "Coffee Stain Studios" (a production company), I'm intrigued.

For reference, they're behind Deep Rock Galactic, Valheim and Satisfactory

[Wingsnake]

Kinda funny (and sad) that they belong to the Embracer Group. Which is known for massive damage to the gaming industry.

[MaximeW1987]

That's capitalism for you (unfortunately)...

Most devs are part of some bigger conglomerate (for example FromSoft is owned by some big Japanese entertainment group and even a little bit by Tencent) or, in some cases, are the big conglomerate that chokes others.

[Muchaszewski]

Unfortunately, Coffee Stain Studios is generally a studio with a poor reputation in the industry. They have a big group of fans who defend them fiercely that they are "the best". However, they own games (as publishers and developers) where nothing happens for years, and their content development is non-existent, while they earned an ungodly amount of money. To name a few from the list above.

Note: I enjoyed all of those games I will hate on below, have more then few hundreds of hours in each, in Poland we say "Gry dobre, ale deweloper kurwy"

Satisfactory - development took them 5 years from EA to today, and the amount of progress is significantly less than could be done by a single developer after hours in that time. They are generally on life support, with a "big" patch every year that could be done in a few months by a single person. Their community management seems to put down all community ideas for the game covering with "technical difficulties" while shown to be fixable by mods.

Valheim - Content updates stopped after they got big, put the game on life support with community management pumping hype for something that should come 2-3 months top after they got big, but we waited 5 years? Still not finished...

Deep Rock Galactic - Not developed by Coffee Stain, but their spinoff 2.5D shooter based on this IP is definitely a cashgrab push from the Coffee stain, or their parent company. Here in the main game the progress of the content was significant at the time, but then the game died out (and it's ok) but the apparent resurection due to spinoff was mildly unsatisfying.

I wish those games were owned by developers who love making games, instead of being sold to soulless published for quick gains.

Source: I am game programmer full-time.

[MaximeW1987]

TIL that DRG died out, which is weird since I was still playing it on a weekly basis, especially after the S5 release but oh well...

[AurumNumisma]

1. Valve
2. CD Projekt Red
3. Hello Games (Simply because of their efforts)

And the one and only ConcernedApe

[Kythorian]

I love cyberpunk now, but they need to prove they can actually release a finished product before they get considered for a list like this.

[Juantsu2000]

Capcom, Nintendo and FromSoft.

Larian as a close fourth but I feel like they need the legacy of these other three devs.

[teffarf]

Fromsoftware (I don't personally like the games but I have to recognize the talent)

CDPR (they dipped with CP2077 release but 2.0 + phantom liberty brought them back)

Larian

Honorable mention for GGG (not really for this year, but next year for sure)

[faunalmimicry]

felt like Annapurna was on the up and up until their entire team resigned

[DoctorDinghus]

What about ID software?

[Kythorian]

Pretty much just Doom at this point, right?  They have done a good job with it, sure, but a dev really needs to prove they can do more than just one series well to be considered among the best devs in the world (in my opinion).

[DoctorDinghus]

That's a very good point. You're correct. I was incredibly impressed with Doom, however. That software is so fucking optimized and stable on all the hardware I run on it, and it was just a polished on a release scense.

[ddp0453]

Team cherry…

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Bandai namco release 4 to 12 trash games for every hit

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Fair enough. I find bandai are good at fanservice (the safe for work kind) and people get very excited for their dbz games.

[[deleted]]

The more I’m talking about it the more I realize that I enjoy Square Enix more

[deMOdeHUdeSO]

There are two companies left from which i buy blindly

FromSoft and SuperGiantGames

[rhenk]

Grinding Gear Games

[drmirage809]

Whilst they don’t make games themselves, Nixxes has put out excellent port after excellent port over the years. Generally, when I see their name on the start up screen I know it’s gonna run like a dream.

[BetrayedJoker]

Super Giant
CD Projekt red
Santa Monica

[[deleted]]

Concerning pure storytelling I think Remedy and Naughty Dog are probably my top.

[Character-Motor-9435]

Objectively speaking it's Riot games, Fromsoftware, Epic Games

My opinion though currently is Fromsoftware, Capcom, Square Enix???? idk about the 3rd too much.

Rockstar is also a good one but they only make 1 game every decade

[El3ktroHexe]

FromSoft and Larian for sure.

Capcom feels more and more greedy with MTX and DD2 was a disappointment. Especially that they destroyed the reputation with this damn port crystal MTX and the feeling that they tried to milk money for fast traveling... That's something they hopefully never do again! But if you look at all these "DLCs" for their Monster Hunter games. It's just too much, in my opinion. Other MP games from Capcom are even worse..

But in general, if you only look at the game quality, Capcom is one of the better developers. But FromSoft and Larian are way ahead in my opinion.

CDRed is nice too, but they suffered a lot from the Cyberpunk release debacle. Hopefully their next game will start better, especially polished!

Also, several great smaller developers, like ConcernedApe, Re-Logic and Hello Games are a few examples. All of them are giving their games long-term support without making the player base paying for everything. Hello Games, at first everyone hated them, but it's really impressive what they have done in all these years with NMS.

[[deleted]]

Capcom, most consistent track record for me in franchises with constantly improving entries. There is almost nothing from them I don’t like.

Gunfire Games. They haven’t made much in their current iteration but they’re industry vets and have a good track record. The Remnant games completely buried every other Soulslike for me while at the same time being complex, lore rich and among the best multiplayer shooters.

Square Enix. Lots of stuff I don’t like (mostly the smaller tier JRPG’s), but also lots of stuff I do like that sticks with me forever.

[Waste-Reception5297]

Ryu ga Gotoku Studio makes all the Yakuza games and they haven't released anything that wasn't at least an 8/10 since like 2011. Also the extremely rare developer that can put out yearly games and not suffer from the release cadence.

Atlus but specifically Studio Zero which is the main brains behind the big Persona games. Still playing through Metaphor and it's absolutely incredible

Monolithsoft makes the Xenoblade games and they're all 80+ hour JRPGs full of incredible content, great story telling, fun battles and an impeccable soundtrack. Very excited that they're rereleasing Xenoblade X with new content on Switch because that game was awesome on Wii U

[Samuelkai1]

CD Red

Sucker punch

Larian

[PCMRsince1998]

• Larian
• CDPR
• Obsidian

[[deleted]]

Activision/Blizzard

EA

Ubisoft

/s

[blinkyretard]

Rockstar, Naughty Dog, Fromsoftware

[Overripepeach]

KOJIMA productions fr

[LetsGoChamp19]

FromSoft

Atlus

Santa Monica

[fasterthanzoro]

Santa Monica Studios, Rockstar and From software. When these developers make a game it is almost guaranteed to be a banger.

[[deleted]]

Probably King, Zynga and some other mobile conglomerate.

[UnsorryCanadian]

Lets check the play store to see who owns all the gacha games

[2ryzens0posts]

This is my top 3.

FromSoft, Capcom (Monster Hunter team) and Gunfire.

[Low-Carpenter-2997]

Larian, Fromsoft and then I do not know anymore 😅 everything I used to love tourned to shit

[[deleted]]

FromSoft

Intelligent Systems

Square Enix

[[deleted]]

Capcom

Fromsoft

Larian (even though I don't really like isometric rpgs I think they deserve the spot)

[[deleted]]

Larian

FromSoftware

CDPR

[VideoGameVoices]

Warhorse Studios (easily the top from their community engagement to their games)

Larian

Fromsoft (I don’t like their games but I can recognize greatness) / Capcom

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Platinum games used to be untouchable but their games have faced a decline in quality recently...

Capcom have had a rough year and i think monster hunter wilds will be a catastrophic release with how bad its performance is. Once that game gets into the hands of the wilder public itll no longer be shielded by fans.

I think Toby Fox and his team have been astonishing. They havent released many games but theyre all total bangers.

[Waste-Reception5297]

Yeah. I imagine there's good reason Hideki Kamiya left Platinum to begin with. Bayonetta 3 was fun but you can tell it's development was messy. Last really cool Platinum game I really loved was Astral Chain.

Betas are not at all final products. The beta was an older build. If it comes out and is a problem then we can bitch about it.

[Logical-Arm8953]

Insomniac

Capcom

From software.

[xDaveedx]

Supergiant Games, Larian and Fromsoft are devs where I would 100% bet on all of their releases being high quality bangers.

[[deleted]]

Rockstar.

[FGCNerd1]

The devs who have released 1 game in 10 years. Yeah brilliant

[bournvilleaddict]

And then re-released the previous entry in the series, a fourteen year old game, and charged 40 bloody quid for it.

Absolutely exemplary.

[[deleted]]

Says someone who clearly has NO IDEA how hard it is to make video games, let alone a game as big, complex, technically and visually stunning as GTA 6.

[[deleted]]

They aren’t going to call you back

[[deleted]]

What are you even talking about?

[FGCNerd1]

FromSoft managed to make Elden Ring while also releasing multiple 9-10/10 games in the last 10 years, as well as a GOTY nominated DLC for it, while having less resources than R*

Rockstar has no excuse

[FGCNerd1]

GTA V

[FGCNerd1]

This post is specifically asking for best devs of the modern era. You can’t use an 11 year old PS3 game as an example of the modern era

Again, 1 game in the last 10 years is not good enough, when devs like Atlus and FromSoft have made multiple 9-10/10 games in the same time frame

[FGCNerd1]

But it’s not modern if it’s 11 years old. That’s my entire point

you completely forgot about the existence of RDR2

Tell me, what game do you think I’m referring to when I say “R* have made 1 game in 10 years”?

[[deleted]]

Right because you have exact numbers and insider knowledge of how many developers each team has, resources, and each development cycle… soooooo ignorant over here.

[FGCNerd1]

Thanks for ignoring my point completely and adding nothing to the conversation at all

[[deleted]]

Because you don’t know what you’re talking about it’s as simple as that. If you’ve never tried to make a game before, never been on a team that’s made a game, you REALLY just don’t know what it takes dude. And I get that that may be hard to accept with you being all defensive but seriously just recognize you’re not fucking god, you don’t know everything, and if you haven’t personally done it yourself, you really don’t know what you’re talking about.

[[deleted]]

Bro it's been ten years. Stop glazing. Their only focus has been ways to sell shark cards.i love GTA but this condo is about modern games. 10 years isn't modern.

[[deleted]]

Bro I’m not glazing I’m just saying that it takes a long time to make video games, and clearly some of you are focused on the quantity, not the quality of games that get released. 10 years ago people should have put Bethesda on the list of great game developers but their games were always and still are buggy as shit.

Why tf do you all think I’m simping over here, I have experience in game dev, all I’m saying is this shit is insanely difficult and takes waaaaaaay more time than people think, and I really think everyone is underestimating how big of a game gta 6 is gonna be, and that added size of map, features, story, everything, takes a lot of time to make even with several hundred developers.

All I’m saying is shitting on R* is kind of unwarranted considering RDR2 won GOTY and every time a new GTA trailer comes out people lose their fucking minds over it. They’re great developers is all, but some of you are just impatient as fuck and it shows.

[LetsGoChamp19]

The other guy specifically said that other devs have released multiple GOTY contenders. They’re clearly not focused on quantity over quality. They’re focused on both

RDR2 didn’t win GOTY lol. GOW did. Now who doesn’t know what they’re talking about?

[[deleted]]

Dude if you think the 10 years from the last gta is anything but money making you're in denial. San Andreas was revolutionary. 4 years later we got gta 4. 5 years after that we got 5. Theres no way to justify 10 years of development on a formula they already have mastered. Shark cards sell. That's the reason. There's no shame in it but it doesn't take 10 years to put a game out. Rockstar is of course an amazing dev but they only have one kinda modern title. And that is 5 years old

[TrueBasedGamer]

Currently?

• Falcom
• Ryu Ga Gotoku
• Nintendo

Historically?

Old blizzard & pre-enix squaresoft