Shovelware Developers

[thekosmickollector]

So by the looks of things there hasn't been a thread made for this topic yet, but I've always found it to be an interesting one.
Companies that produce games so awful that they fade into obscurity the second they hit store shelves, not even creating the notoriously bad games that make so many "Bottom 10" lists today.
I've always found it odd that games can be so awful and yet so unrecognised by gamers.
These companies call themselves "Budget developers", and use it as an excuse to create games with the most minimal effort possible, sometimes even rendering the games unplayable.
One of these companies for me is Midas Interactive. I think they were a JP & EU-only team (correct me if I'm wrong) but I own some of their games and oh god are they awful. Skyscraper, for one, is a game I bought from the PS2 "Classics" (and believe me, I use that term VERY loosely) on PSN for about £2 because I thought it'd be a fun, if low budget romp for the night.
Boy, was I wrong. The controls are bugged to hell, the voice acting is laughably awful, the level design resembles a group of waiting rooms & doctors' offices strung together by beige corridors and the flash game-level puzzle you have to complete at the end of EVERY level can sometimes be LITERALLY UNCOMPLETABLE.


So, I ask you, do any of you know of another company like this?

[nova1977]

Interesting topic. I'm aware of a publisher called Conspiracy Entertainment in the US that releases a host of terribad games, perhaps most famously Anubus II and Ninjabread Man on the Wii (though developed by studios elsewhere). I have a feeling most of those developers now spend their energy on mobile and steam where they don't have to bother with physical publishing, and can scam a whole lot easier through cheap and free app downloads. Probably a good thing for clearing up console libraries of their trash a bit, and I'm sure we'll see less of it on the consoles this generation than we have in the past, save for a few cases every now and then.

[fazerco]

I know of MSL, that publishes mostly puzzle and mystery games. Not the best quality, but the sometimes have a nice ones.

[foxhack]

Let's see.

Agetec published a ton of these on the PS1 (though most came from JP developers so they're actually beatable), Mad Duck Games did too... and of course there's Phoenix Games on the PS1 / PS2.

Activision had a couple of budget brands including Activision Value Publishing, which published lots and lots of crap on PC and consoles.

2K / Take Two had Global Star Software for a while before they sold it to Cosmi.

Speaking of Cosmi they've been selling crap games for all sorts of PCs (and the early consoles, too?) since the 1980s. Well, they did, they're bankrupt now. :p