Have to wonder what happened during the QA process :(

CD Projekt Red hands down, my drm free hero

My sympathies lie with very small and creative indie teams who make great original games and manage to come across like really nice people at the same time. Wadjet Eye Games, Swing Swing Submarine and Instant Kingdom come to mind, for example.

I also like Double Fine and Arkane Studios. And while I'm not really a fanboy of them and don't like everything they do, I respect Bioware for Jade Empire and Mass Effect and their longtime support of the NWN community, and CDProjekt for proving other publishers wrong about the necessity of DRM on big budget games.

Introversion Software
CD Projekt RED
Wolfire Games
Valve

Oh yeah, also Double Fine

Level Up Labs, the guys behind Defender's Quest, are pretty much the awesomest dudes in the industry.

CDPR is great too, of course, and everything from Wadjet Eye is consistently good.

I'm bad at favorites, but some key examples of my likes and why are as follows;

CD Projekt for The Witcher series (hey guys can you urge that the rest of the novels be translated into english, I'd love to read them :) ) and for no DRM

InXile for the method/creative process behind their upcoming games, and no DRM

DoubleBear Productions for creating a story based zombie game which focuses on the human survivors rather than being another House of the Dead/Left 4 Dead (both amusing enough but it's been done) and for no DRM.

Larian Studios For their community interaction/support and of course for selling their contemporary releases DRM free.

I could go on but the simple assessment is as follows; Have a good story? Provide curtious customer support (i.e. no pre-fab auto responder messages that give people the run around)? Release your games (including current games) DRM free? Then odds are I'll like your development studio, buy your games, and share happy reviews about you. (After all, isn't almost every other aspect of gaming, and I suppose maybe even story content when we get right down to it, a matter of personal preference?)

My thoughts on the subject.

PS Honorable mentions; Blizzard, EA-Bioware, Valve-Steam; for all the fun I've had with their older games, all the people I've met playing/talking about them and for each playing a unique role in teaching me that no matter what the game or who it is from it simply is not worth it to me to buy a product that contains DRM.

It's hard to put them in any specific order, so this is an unordered list:

CD Projekt RED:
The Witcher 3 is my most highly anticipated title at this point, along with Cyberpunk 2077. That's due to a combination of how awesome the Witcher game series is, and of their viewpoint on DRM being evil and putting all of their games out DRM-free including letting people who bought them with DRM previously getting DRM-free copies on GOG.com backup service. When these 2 new titles come out, they may very well be the only games I potentially buy at or near full price for a long time, and that's primarily because of DRM-free opinions/stance of the company founders.

id Software:
id's games totally dominated my gaming in the 90s. They were the cream of the crop in my gaming experience up to and including DOOM3. Every game blew me away, upping the ante of what could be done in a game engine running on a PC with eye candy. I never got into Quake III Arena nor anything since DOOM3 but that was mostly due to my computers sucking and falling out of gaming for a few years. I'll be catching up on their back catalogue over time, and I tend to enjoy all of their games even if some of them get dissed in the press/reviews/etc. id == awesome. Sadly, with John Carmack now leaving the company, the talent that made id id is now gone and I don't hold much hope for future titles from the company that carry the name only under the hand of Bethesda, but id lives on in spirit in my mind.

Valve:
Halflife. 'nuff said! They redefined the FPS genre and made it very interesting and entertaining with a good story line and immersive gameplay. The standalone expansions Opposing Force, Blue Shift were good followups, and the long awaited Halflife 2 was something to behold when it came out. I never got a chance to play the Halflife 2 expansions or other games as they came out due to computer suckage, but recently I bought the all inclusive "Valve Pack" and have all of their titles to explore in the future. I solved Portal twice a week or so ago, and gave Left 4 Dead 2 a test run, both impressive and a refreshing change from what I'm used to. Very much looking forward to getting through all of the games eventually, and for future sequels such as Halflife 3, Portal 3, and new franchises that might pop up.

Blizzard:
I started with Warcraft II, which was one of those holy shit awesome games in the 90s. I can never tire of Warcraft II, and would enjoy playing it multiplayer today if I found some knuckleheads that still enjoy it also. (And if I could get it to fully function in Windows 7/x64). Then Starcraft... I played that game on and off ever since it came out in '97, occasionally going a year or two without playing, then getting back into it again. A buddy and I played it extensively about 2-3 years ago until finally retiring it for other games, but another buddy still actively does LAN parties with Starcraft which I join into occasionally. It's 16+ years old for crap sake, wow! Then there are the Diablo series, in particular the original and Diablo II, of which we've also occasionally fired up again over the years and went through. I went through Diablo I a zillion times earlier this year and had a blast in preparation for Diablo III coming out, which funny enough I've never played. And Warcraft III, another classic that was quite enjoyable when it came out although we haven't replayed it as much as the older games. I haven't played World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, or Diablo III mind you due to the subscription model of the former not matching my game playing style, and the latter two having features implemented as online only for DRM control which I'm not fond of. Nonetheless, Blizzard has some great classics that bring a smile to think about even though they've moved in a direction that doesn't work for me anymore.


So those are mostly my historical favourites (not including CD Projekt RED which is much newer), but they are all relevant today still and so I'd say they're ultimately still my favourites.

Its a draw between the awesome

<span class="bold">Francisco T&eacute;llez de Meneses</span>, creator of <i>Unepic</i>
and
<span class="bold">Amanita Design</span>, the creators of <i>Machinarium</i>

Indie-Europe, FTW! :D

You forgot the now defunct Shiny for Sacrif .....oh wait, wrong person !

QFT

I'm going to have to say Spiderweb, they make games I want to play and always make sure that there's a huge demo so I know that the game is good but they're so dependable and reasonably priced that I can buy sight on scene and have no problems. Also they haven't done anything that really bugged me and made me think of them in a more negative light.

Obsidian has a longstanding monopoly on my fanboyism. Others I appreciate would be TellTale, CRPR, Doublefine, inXile...

Sry, but I didn't get it... Could you be so kind and explain the allusion?

I mentioned Double Fine earlier, I feel like I must reiterate that after having gotten my backer copy of Broken Age Act 1. Just playing it for a few minutes has me absolutely captivated. Easily worth my pledge.

What pops into my head:

Obsidian
CDPR
BioWare (yeah, I still like them)
Larian

Now this may or may not count, but the whole team behind Dosbox (and ScummVM too!) for making such incredible tools to let you play the golden oldies on new systems.

As far as actual game developers go, it's a tie between Epic Games and Obsidian, I probably have over 300 hours combined for all of their games (I think New Vegas takes up at least 100 of those).

There's somebody who goes by the name of Licurg who has a very similar avatar as you, and is ALWAYS telling people to buy Sacrifice.