Irrational Games: I played Bioshock.

Bioware - So much happened within the space of a few years immediately after Dragon Age Origins : 1. They were acquired by EA, 2. Bioware founders (Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk) retired, 3. All the serious talent who pulled off Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter Nights & Dragon Age Origins left the company including Mike Laidlaw & James Ohlen (Creative Directors), Brent Knowles (Lead Designer), David Gaider (Lead Writer), Kevin Martens (Senior Designer), etc. Brent Knowles openly said at the time "Looking ahead I knew that I wasn't going to be satisfied with what Dragon Age 2 would be. I'm not the same person I was when I started, and BioWare isn't the same company".

Bethesda - Since the lame attempt at Paid Mods / Creation Club, it's been obvious their modern image is built entirely on endlessly rebooting the past (endless Skyrim re-releases) + the backs of modders. Fallout 76 was just icing on the cake.

So no particular details, then?

Except when they are. Especially when they self-publish.

Bioware. It was extremely obvious in their games that they got taken over by EA. At least we got Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age Origins before that happened.

Blizzard. They got too hung up on WoW, which became painfully apparent with the release of Diablo 3. It could have just been called Wowblo and nobody would bat an eye.

Guess that B is an unlucky letter...

Same here. I played some of the games beyond DA:O (DA2, which I did not like, and DA:I, which I found tolerable), but it was obvious they weren't making games like they used to and were never going to again. I used to be a moderator on their old NWN boards as well as the DA:O boards when they shut the NWN forums down. By that time though, I could see things changing internally from the bit of extra knowledge I got from being a moderator. I really held out hope that they'd pull out of the tailspin they were entering after EA bought them, but alas it just got worse.

I lost faith in Westwood after playing Command and conquer 2: Tiberian sun back in 1999. The game had been massively hyped, but it turned out to be thoroughly mediocre (and badly balanced in its initial version), with few of the features that had been promised. Even the story was disappointing, so that ended my interest in the C&C franchise.

I lost faith in Blizzard after playing Starcraft 2: Legacy of the void. I hadn't enjoyed the mission design in Starcraft 2 that much anyway (though I kind of liked Heart of the swarm), but the way they butchered the story and the Starcraft universe in that final instalment really killed off any interest I might still have had. Didn't enjoy the multiplayer with its focus on "e-sport" freaks much either.

You aren't wrong you know, add Bethesda and you have the worst of the worst.

I honestly wouldn‘t know where to begin. I didn‘t play it until 7 years after the initial release when a DRM-free version was basically given away at the $1-tier on Humble, and I was just awestruck by the complete disconnect between the absurd amount of praise that was heaped on this game and the mind-numbindly tedious, mediocre "System Shock 2 for Dummies" it actually turned out to be.

What you wanna hear? The story being a paint-by-numbers retelling of Shock 2‘s? Ken Levine having a E3-induced brain fart half-way through production and deciding that their FPS/RPG/survival horror-hybrid (albeit already dumbed down for consoles) also needed to be a Cowadoody-like cinematic experience, which resulted in the final game in being a very, VERY uncomfortable mix between these two. The beautifully designed, yet oddly lifeless environment that felt more like a Disneyland ride rather than an actual place that people used to live and work in? The fact that AI and sound propagation are somehow inferior to what Irrational/Looking Glass managed to do with the Dark Engine almost a decade earlier? The braindead "morals" system that was botched due to publisher interference? There being a grand total of maybe 3 enemy types in the game? Suspense, let alone actual horror, being basically nonexistent, save for some heavy-handed gross-out gore? There still being glaring bugs in the game, which no one ever bothered to fix - instead they put out a "Remaster" that introduced arguably worse bugs.

Bottom line: I love Shock 2 and still play it about once every year. SWAT4 is somewhat overrated, but still a really great game that is a textbook example of how to do environmental storytelling. With Bioshock, I‘m at a complete loss what people see in it. I managed to force myself through it once and never again. And not for lack of trying, but I always loose interest about 1 hour in because it‘s so freaking dull and lifeless. It does have two good things going for it: Quark from DS9 does a kickass Orson Welles impression. And at least it‘s not Bioshock Infinite, which is so incredibly dumb and boring I gave up less than 2 hours in.

CD Projekt Red: Now it's definitely not the same company which created Witcher series. Their recently released Gwent game has many bugs, every new update fixes some of them but (at the same time) introduces new ones, devs communication with players is so bad I have no words to describe, we have some promises but their deadlines are often extended. I love playing Gwent but I lost the faith it will be polished - it's treated as some testing field and devs have no clue what to patch and to do next.

I'll reserve judgement until they release Cyberpunk. I see no reason to compare a single player RPG with an online multiplayer card game. I don't even know if there's a "developer overlap"...

Square, when Final Fantasy 7 appeared. At least they did make some decent games later, like SaGa Frontier 1/2, at least.

I note that FF7's release came at a time when Square did not care about game balance; we see many easy ways to break many Square games of that era. We have FF6 Ultima, FF7 Knights of the Round (who thought *that* was balanced?) as well as its ultimate weapons, Final Fantasy Tactics's Orlandu (not to mention Math Skill, but that's a bit trickier to use), and SaGa Frontier's DSC and PluralSlash/CombatMastery combo (though at least DSC isn't that easy to get; PluralSlash/CombatMastery, on the other hand...).

At least Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG felt reasonably balanced, so we at least have that (and I don't know about Square's later SFC offerings, except Rudra no Hihou).

(Note that I am referring to the old Square, not Square-Enix, which came later.)

Lol, Bioshock Infinite is the only good Bioshock.

That is certainly an interesting take; but it was becoming obvious that Square wanted to get into movies. For some bizarre reason.