I haven't heard of a lot of these companies and I have looked them up on Metacritic and found nothing. Any insight as to how these were done? I'm new to the site so I'm unaware of how they've done it in previous years! Thanks :)

2D Boy should make some new games. I looked through their site a couple of days ago but all they were doing is porting World of Goo to more platforms. Did their inspiration run dry?

"TU" in "TU Wien" actually stands for "technical university". They are no dev-team, no publisher, nothing. It's like "Stanford" would be on the list. Surely one would like to give credit to the team that developed the game instead of the location they created it at?

The list as a whole seems rather focused on tiny studios with preferably 1 successful game. Sure, it's even better for the big studios that managed to get on the list, but really, the system probably is broken.

So some "indie" who made a choplifter clone and cashed in on the early gold rush of the app store is better than popcap games. Right.

Also how come Crytek aren't on the list? Did Crysis 2 do worse than 100 other titles on the list? :P

Congratulations Develop!

With this article you have guaranteed your place at the top of the 100 Most Pointless Games Industry Articles of All Time.

Just as the industry thought this magazine and website couldn't get any more irrelevant to those who develop games you've gone and surpassed your own low standards.

There are so many blatant flaws in what you've done here I won't bother pointing them out- but I hope the traffic you've gained from this rubbish was worth infuriating pretty much your entire audience...

Develop's strength and relevance to the industry doesn't need defending at all, but I will say we take all feedback on board regarding all our articles.

My contact phone number is easy to find on here if you want to step out of anonymity and offer further feedback.

Best,

Rob.

This list was done awfully. Those with a high rated single game like Super Meat Boy achieve higher than EA DICE, BioWare or Rockstar North due to their average rating being higher. That's not how a chart like this should work.

@Kev, why isn't it? If Rockstar North had released one really highly rated game and Team Meat three averagely rated ones, would you still be complaining?

You should probably re-lable this from a list of good developers to a list of consistently well reviewed developers.

That explains the bizzare situation where those games which are niche or predictible enough to only be reviewed by supporters get higher scores, and advertising/hype + focused gameplay = a trip to the lower end of the list.

To make it more interesting, how about creating a graphic instead of a list, with metacritic score or equivalent as one axis, and standard deviation along the other.

Then you will actually have something informative for those who have respect for the magically transferable 1/100 number as a measure of game quality.

Irrespective of who is or isn't in the list, this is a disappointing change in methodology. Take Metacritic into account if you like but there's much more to the 'best' developers than an aggregate of their review scores.

Having said that, it's good to see the developers of "America's Test Kitchen: Let's Get Cooking" finally getting the recognition they deserve.

Treyarch are in the top 100 and Bioware aren?! This does not take into consideration that Treyarch didnt even develop the IP at all, took the CoD franchise, made a poor game but because its a CoD franchise game achieved a high Meta-Score.

I Dont Understand Why Rockstar leeds Are 9 And Rockstar North Are 28, Leeds Only Did The Three Portable GTA Games While North Did The Main Series

Also Treyarch Should Not Be Here Ther GAmes Are Awful

This is a list of Metacritic's Top 100 Rated Companies of the year.

Why are you trying to sell this as something that took research and theory to produce?

I think if Develop had indiviually rated each company based on a number of factors and then cross referenced and narrowed down to the Top 100, then it would be Develop's.

Instead it seems you went to Metacritic, asked for the top Rated Companies for Fiscal 2010 and pasted into your website.

This is the reason people are responding negatively. Because it is borderline plagerism besides the tiny little blurb at the bottom. God I hope Metacritic didn't pay you to do this, because then this becomes "Advertisement". And writing an "Article" that is actually "Advertisement" is terrible journalism.

This list is a major fail. I haven't even heard about half of these developer groups, and why the hell isn't BioWare on the list? It should be in the TOP3 for sure!

Seriously whaaat? I understand Nintendo, though I don't like their games. But I've got a feeling that someone's "great idea" was rejected by Bioware. The kings of the western single player RPG *must* be here. Baldur's Gate 2, KotOR, Jade Empire, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2 anyone? Also 90% of these developers are WTF? I've never heard of them.

Yeah, Bioware's a bad company all right. They haven't had any big releases in 2010... like Mass Effect 2.

But let's go ahead and forget Bioware exists, then put 2D Boy at number 2... ahead of Blizzard. Because we all know World of Goo just has World of Warcraft chasing its heels.

What a stupid list.

Hey Rob,

KB isn't the only one disappointed in this article. The Develop 100 used to be eagerly awaited at the studio I work at, but I'm afraid the comments on our forum are all negative with regard to the change of direction.

If I wanted to know what metacritic had calculated, I would go to metacritic.

(Note: I am speaking as an individual, not a representative of the company I work for)

what the hell is this...I was linked from the article that explains why bioware isn't on this list...and this is one of the most retarded article I have read in recent memory.

While I think bioware's recent games have been pretty shitty, saying it's a failure as a studio because it's not on a silly list ordered by aggregate metacritic score is just plain stupid.

And wow...2dboy, porting the same game over and over again for a couple years makes it to the top, how can you not see something wrong with that?

Hi Hedd
The Reason Rockstar Leeds Came Before Rockstar North is because Rockstar Leeds Did something Rockstar Games Couldn't... Yes, Rockstar North Made GTA IV, San Andreas, Vice City and GTA III but Rockstar Leeds Made 2 Free Roam Games Without a touch of lag on a portable game console which rockstar north have been trying for a long long time.

Rockstar North were failing to make 1 island Freeroam Games on the psp without lag...
Then ROckstar Leeds Steps In And Makes, 2, 2 island games :)

Now You Must Agree, That is a great Success For Rockstar Leeds :)