Well, well, well, look who decided to grace us with their annual “we crunched some numbers and here’s who’s best” report! Metacritic, the website that has single-handedly decided the worth of every human being who has ever touched a controller, has blessed us with their 2025 publisher rankings. And let me tell you, these rankings are 100% objective and not at all influenced by corporate interests, personal bias, or the fact that Metacritic probably gets kickbacks from publishers who rank higher. Nope, none of that!
So how did they determine the best publishers? Oh, just by looking at four magical factors: average Metascore (because we all know that 7.5 is objectively better than 7.4), percentage of games with “good” reviews (which they definitely have a crystal-clear, universally agreed-upon definition for), percentage of games with “bad” reviews (because failure is for losers), and number of games with a metascore of 90 or higher (the coveted “we paid for good reviews” badge of honor). And of course, only publishers with five or more games qualify, because God forbid an indie publisher with one masterpiece ruins the spreadsheet.
Let’s dive into the top five, shall we? Because who has time to read about all 28 publishers when we could be arguing about whether Metacritic’s algorithm is secretly controlled by a sentient AI that hates fun?
Microsoft, the company that owns everything including your soul and probably your dog, snagged fifth place. How, you ask? Well, apparently having subsidiaries like Bethesda, Activision, and Blizzard helps! Who knew that being a trillion-dollar monopoly would give you an advantage? Their lineup included Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 (which, let’s be honest, is just Skate 4 with a different name), The Outer Worlds 2 (the game that answers the question “what if we made Outer Worlds but worse?”), Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (number 7, because at this point why even pretend it’s a new game?), and the Indiana Jones and The Great Circle DLC (which is definitely not just three new fetch quests, no sir).
At number four, we have Thunderful, a publisher I’m 90% sure I’m misspelling. Thunderful, even without many games to help its score, has beaten the odds by just having a lot of positive reviews from games like ISLANDERS: New Shores and Lost in Random: The Eternal Die. I haven’t played these games, but apparently they’re good enough to beat out actual gaming giants. Take that, Nintendo! Your decades of quality control and innovation mean nothing against Thunderful’s mysterious algorithm!
Capcom, the company that keeps remaking the same games and we keep buying them, sits comfortably at third place with a score of 322.2 points. That’s right, they missed second place by a measly 0.2 points. Can you imagine being Capcom right now? “We came this close to being second best at existing!” Their crown jewel was Monster Hunter Wilds, a game about hunting monsters in the wild. Revolutionary! They also had Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection (the game where you reflect on how many Monster Hunter games exist) and Resident Evil Requiem (which I’m pretty sure is just Resident Evil 9 wearing a fake mustache).
Beating out Capcom by those previously mentioned 0.2 points is Gamirror Games. A Chinese indie publisher formerly known as Gamera Games had five titles in 2025, including the acclaimed Absolum, all of which received positive reviews. That makes Gamirror Games one of only two publishers to have only green ratings on their games. Gamirror Games, the company that proves you don’t need to be a massive corporation to make decent games! Just a small, passionate team working out of a basement somewhere in Shanghai. I’m sure they’re absolutely thrilled to be mentioned alongside Microsoft and Capcom. “Mom, I made it! I’m as good as the company that makes Call of Duty!”
And finally, sitting at the coveted number one spot is Square Enix, which has never won the publisher of the year, until now. Headed by the beautiful Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Square Enix has had every single one of its 2025 releases be rated highly. Every. Single. One. I’m not saying they paid for good reviews, but I’m also not NOT saying that. They also had other Final Fantasy games (because why make new IPs when you can just make more Final Fantasy games?) and Dragon Quest (which Americans forget exists but sells millions in Japan). Even their worst game of the year, SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered, had high praise from critics. Critics who, I’m sure, were in no way influenced by the fact that they were playing a remastered version of a 25-year-old game and had their expectations lowered accordingly.
So there you have it, folks! An expected but unexpected list of publishers from the minds at Metacritic. A list that proves once and for all that numbers don’t lie, unless they’re numbers about game quality, in which case they absolutely lie constantly. Remember, if your favorite publisher didn’t make the list, it’s definitely because their games weren’t good enough and not because Metacritic’s algorithm is fundamentally flawed and biased toward certain types of games and certain regions. Definitely not that.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go argue with strangers on the internet about why my favorite game from 2025 deserves a higher score than the 73 it got. Metacritic says it’s bad, but I say it’s a 9/10 and anyone who disagrees is a corporate shill! Facts don’t care about your feelings!
Pixel P. Snarkbyte, widely regarded as the “Shakespeare of Sh*tposts,” is a video game expert with a unique knack for turning pixels into punchlines.
Born in the small town of Respawn, Pennsylvania, Pixel grew up mashing buttons on an ancient NES controller, firmly believing that “blowing into the cartridge” was a sacred ritual passed down through generations.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte: proving that life, much like a buggy open-world game, is better with a little lag-induced chaos.
