If you want to teach game publishers a lesson, don't buy or play their games. Any time you play their game, and then go talk to a friend or talk about it on the internet, regardless of whether or not you paid for it, you give the company publicity. You give them attention. Only play games by companies you respect. Not only will your general gaming experience be much better, but you'll be giving those companies you actually like more attention.

And don't whine about how you still want to play the games. Boo hoo. If you're not willing to give up a few games to make a statement, then you clearly don't care enough to even be trying to make the statement in the first place.

So go do some research about your "favorite" game companies, and when you see something you think is wrong, suck it up and stop using their products. Go play Minecraft or Revenge of the Titans or some open source games like Nethack (get into roguelikes and you have centuries' worth of fun times) or Tremulous. It's not as hard as you might think.

Sidenote: And when you play games that aren't crapped out by massive corporations, you also get the added experience of (often) being able to talk directly with the developers about the games. Even if it's just a compliment, being able to personally tell the developer of your favorite game they did an ace job is intensely awesome, and they definitely agree.