From Software would have to be my choice for this. I've never understood how anyone can enjoy THAT much of a challenge in gaming. I don't play games out of some masochistic desire to repeat the same sections of a game over and over again, I play games to have fun, to escape the garbage in the real world and unwind in my free time.

Bloober Team.

All of their games managed to pique my interest, all of them turned out to be complete dreck (nice visuals aside).

Telltale Games
I used to love adventure games by Lucas Arts like Monkey Island, Sam & Max and Day of the Tentacle when I was a kid but when I tried the new breed of adventure games in my teens and twenty's I just could no longer get into them, especially the continuation of my old favourites by Telltale. I think really I had just moved on to things like Thief and Deus Ex and point and click adventures where now to slow and hands off for my tastes and playing Telltales attempts at old childhood favourites just made that sink in fast and hard.

Obsidian

I love KOTOR 1 but dislike KOTOR 2, I love Neverwinter Nights but dislike Neverwinter Nights 2, I love Fallout 3 but dislike Fallout NV, I love spy games but dislike Alpha Protocol, I love sci-fi but dislike The Outer Worlds. Their games should be right up my alley but they just don't jive with me for some reason. They feel too restrictive and verbose and clunky. I think Obsidian mean well and I don't mind giving them my money but I dislike most of what they do.

Gearbox Software was one of my favorite studios since Half-Life: Opposing Force, then there was Brothers in Arms game which was not my favorite game but I liked the concept and the gameplay, then there was one later game in Brothers in Arms series with lots of cutscenes and shooting from cover (like Gears of War) and Borderlands series completely ruined my respect for them. But since so many people love Borderlands I guess they're doing fine job. I just hope that Embracer Group as a new owner will squeeze some Duke Nukem games out of them. And what were they thinking when produced Duke Nukem Forever game, only 2 weapons instead of all, no health and atrocious "hmph" sound for every jump? I also read how they planned to release Duke Nukem 3D expansions for their 20th Anniversary World Tour but... *realized* they were *controversial* and decided to not to, also put on shelf the idea to re-release console exclusive games for PC, but the most embarrassing part was releasing just one small patch fix to heavily broken 20th Anniversary World Tour edition of Duke Nukem 3D, the multiplayer part was broken since the beginning and never fixed. The only part I liked about the game is new 3D engine, it looked cool in my opinion. Too bad Duke Talk lines were uninspiring to say the least.

Ubisoft - Prince of Persia, they produced Prince of Persia Classic for consoles and mobiles but never for PC and nothing about re-release of the original Jordan Mechner's trilogy (yes, I wanted to play Prince of Persia 3D and it has its moments, Prince of Persia 2 is bad but everyone seemed to love it back in a day, Prince of Persia 1 from on DOS with Roland MT-32 is a masterpiece). Their Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was really great and I appreciated the dark grim tone of Warrior Within, can't that I really enjoyed other games but they were nice, but the decision to release Prince of Persia (2008) Epilogue DLC only for XBOX360 and PS3 was insane! I'll never forget them that, I remember when some Ubisoft person wrote on a Steam forum that adding Epilogue DLC to PC would be too cost consuming to consider. But Ubisoft would not stop there, they decided to kill my favorite Heroes of Might & Magic series, the V chapter by Nival was very different by professionally done and quite enjoyable (at times) but who needs good games nowadays, their decision to change the naming and omit the "heroes" from the beginning and outsource it to different studios with ridiculously low budget was not enough, they even managed to connect those games (including save confirmations) to their *perfect* always (not really) online servers, they even managed to kill my game because their servers disconnected once (my internet connection wasn't at the time). But why stop there when you can kill the Might & Magic series releasing the Legacy game as well and with *always online* servers down the best scenario would be not to clear that requirement from the game code but to remove it from the others, way to go, Ubisoft.
And their open world games with lots of flags and *points of interest*, they are not for me, I wasn't able to finish Assassin's Creed 1 after I visited fourth of fifth identical tower and jumped down on a pile of identical hay. I don't know how other people managed to complete the game and even enjoy all the others from the series.
Ubisoft, thank you for making games for the others and killing my favorite franchises, this includes the above mentioned Brothers in Arms.

Electronic Arts. Mass Effect 3, Andromeda, cut in half but still not bad Dragon Age 2, the atrociously bad Dragon Age 3 the MMO with toxic green splashes all over the screen and broken mechanics (have fun playing Rogue) and of course why would I want to romance good looking women in non-real video game, who needs that anyway, right? Well at least one was pretty and that was it. Surprise mechanics, putting Alice: Madness in limbo (only those lucky buyers who bough the complete edition of Madness Returns on Origin can play the patched version), the *accidental* removal of old games Ultima Underworld and Syndicate (reason: we didn't know), naming GOG store as *unauthorized* store front, questionable history representation in Battlefield games, omissions of old games from their store and how many good games the produced for STAR WARS? Some will tell it's one or two (Fallen Order, Battlefront) but it's none for me personally. Good job, EA, you managed to create zero interesting games for me.

I just finished Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (and I finished Kingmaker years ago) and I really disagree with Owlcat about what makes a good CRPG. Story and exploration take a backseat to fussy mechanics, and combat is mostly designed around trying once and seeing what you need to buff against, then trying again. The difficulties are very unbalanced with extremely boring combat that has no challenge and then random, massive difficulty spikes you cannot win against, all on the same setting. There's also very few large zones outside of dungeons like other games in the genre have.

Bioware haven't fallen for me as much as others, but I do find their weird focus on romance and how strongly they push it on you to be a bit creepy and weird.

Current day id Software seem to have an obsession with making you play Simon Says with mechanics instead of just shooting bad guys. Playing Doom Eternal feels more like a color matching game and keyboard dexterity test than it does a shooter. Green enemy, hit grenade! Blue enemy, hit the shield! Ammo counter beeping, hit chainsaw button! Health beeping, hit melee kill! I feel like I'm a dog being trained.

For me Rockstar is a mixed bag.

I LOVE RDR2. One of my favourite games ever. Probably 2nd after Baldur's Gate 2.

I quite liked San Andreas, but I found it too stretched out, too tedious at times, and too archaic (half-life 2 released the same year and had much superior graphics and gameplay mechanics).

However, I hate GTA V and I am not sure why people love it and why it has sold so well.

So I actually haven't played any of the games they made before they fluked into Werewolf Fame? So it's always weird to read this when I had fun with Tales of Monkey Island, Sam & Max, and of course, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.
I just watched ZP review Psychonauts 2, and his final impression was, "But it just made me was to play 1 again."

Which, honestly seems like the sort of thing that happens to DF games. "Oh, this is great and quirky. But it makes me wish I was playing X instead."

Classical Bioware. (By "classical", I'm referring to the "good old days", when they made the Baldur's Gate games.) Note that I don't have any experience with Bioware's more recent games, so I can't judge that.

Mainly because I did not like the Baldur's Gate games for various reasons, including:
* The battle system, which includes the worst aspects of turn based and real time combat, while lacking both the rhythm of turn based and the fluidity of real time. (Before anybody mentions auto-pause, let me point out that the pauses are irregular, so you don't get the rhythm of turn based, while the pauses make combat not fluid.)
* Recruitable characters often have timed quests, which they often initiate, leading to problems if one wants to play at their own pace. (Also, apparently BG1 has one mandatory plot quest that will kill you if you take too long, possibly putting the game into an unwinnable state.) Also, party banter, even if it doesn't initiate timed quests, can interrupt you when trying to do things like manage inventory or handle level-ups, or just travel to the store.
* Combat also has issues inherited from AD&D, like attacks missing way too often (on both sides), but also has further issues, like not using the death's door rule.

Also, the team(s) at Square (this is pre-Square Enix) that developed the PSX Final Fantasy games, as I didn't like 7, and none of the later games were as good as 5. With that said, I enjoyed Final Fantasy Tactics and SaGa Frontier (even though those games are not what I'd call "balanced", as it seemed Square did not care about game balance during that time).

As for Enix, I enjoyed their older Dragon Quest games (and 9, incidentally), but found Dragon Quest 8 to be disappointing for various reasons.

I will never buy anything from Ubisoft. Their handling of Might and Magic 10 is the poster child for why nobody buy any single-player game with online validation DRM.

When Ubisoft decided to shut down the online validation server for Might and Magic 10, they did so with no warning to anyone and kept on selling the game.... even though this meant that nobody would be able to progress past the first act. When people who bought this game started complaining and leaving bad reviews warning others to not buy it. Ubisoft's response was to delist the game from Steam (and any other other storefront that had it) on the pretense that they looking into fixing the issue.

Some users have found workarounds to be able to play the game, but some content still remains inaccessible.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/238750/discussions/0/3115908865100513179/

Also even though Ubisoft's official statement on the issue could be summarized as opps we didn't know that shutting down the server would affect the game that way and are working to fix it, someone found a document on their website that says otherwise:
https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/connectivity-and-performance/article/multiplayer-and-online-services-availability-in-ubisoft-games/000064576

Personally I think the whole we're working on a fix thing was just to discourage people from asking for refunds and that they have no intentions of actually fixing Might and Magic 10.


edit - just noticed that wrote wrote they're instead of their at one point - opps, fixed

Remedy Entertainment.

This gaming company kept getting better and better.
Death rally, max payne, alan wake. So many masterpieces.

But now the original founding members have left or been pushed out by a more feminist centric incompetent game developers who don't know what the hell they are doing. Very sad.

That being such a clear and obvious case of people losing access to singleplayer stuff they paid for, you'd think it would get more press. I know most places did an article when it happened, but where's the follow up? Ubisoft is gonna be "looking into it" forever unless they're pushed.

I think that even if they're pushed, Ubisoft is not going to do anything and will just blow people off at this point. The servers were taken down June 1st so at this point, anyone in the United States that hasn't already requested a refund just isn't going to get one. Why should they even pretend that they'll provide some type of fix at this point. I don't know if this would apply to other countries as I live in the US.

A quick tangent:
Not trying to pick on you, specifically —— since I do this all the time —— but this type of typographical mistake is termed Muphry's Law. (sic :) This is one of the reasons I don't edit my posts as often as I see mistakes, since I expect I will make more mistakes in the correction.

[1] I have Splinter Cell (I think I beat it, can't remember now, purchased the Gog version and I'm gradually working through it again) and originally, with the box copy of SC I had the Pandora missions (I think, have to check, since I was not able to get them running on the last two laptops and never completed them) and then abandoned the series. (Maybe if they release on Gog DRM-free I might carry on.) I bought Rainbow Six (great books; I highly recommend them) but couldn't get into the game and it's collecting zeerust in my Gog library right now.

[2] Bethesda and their fetish for levelling enemies to match the protagonist drives me to distraction. The horrible tonal colours and generally dark palette of Morrowind means that, even though I have bought the game a couple of times (and have a Gog version installed on my game machine) I can't seem to find any time to play it.

[3] Bioware: Haven't played Mass Effect, yet —— hopefully Gog will get it some day. Really like both original BGs, and the epic expansions as well as the original NwN.

All true, but I think I prefer the 2e rules to the later sets.
The systematization implemented to rationalize the rules has made them less interesting, I think. Sure there are weaknesses, but the soul seems a little less vibrant in games like NwN, as compared to the BGs.

I like KotOR, but I think KotOR2 makes the original engine look simplistic and the game very limited (tiny levels: think Endar Spire versus Peragus) but the parlous state it was released really put me off. That said, the community Restoration mod is excellent and demonstrates what the team would have released if it weren't for the prequel movie schedule that determined their own release date.

Still I bought three (or four, can't remember) special editions of NwN2 but only got the chance to play it when it came to Gog. As I prefer turn-based games that I can play predominantly with the mouse, I hated the controls for this game and consequently haven't been able to play it past the tutorial village (even though I reached the (first?) dragon when I bought it at release, way back) because of the need to control everything with the keyboard. Maybe I'll go back sometime. IIRC this game had more bugs than a bait store, too, when it was released.

Obsidian seemed to have great ideas but lacked the ability to proof their work.

edit: added Restoration mod linkie