Metacritic's 11th Annual Game Publisher Rankings

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – March 25, 2021

Which game publishers released the best games in 2020? For the 11th straight year, we sifted through 12 months of data to determine the best and worst game publishers of the year, based solely on the quality of their 2020 releases. Sales and user reviews do not factor into these rankings; only critic reviews (as captured by each game's Metascore) are used to evaluate performance.

Publishers are ranked from worst to best in the gallery above based on a points system, calculated (as in previous years) according to the following four factors:

(1) Average Metascore for all games released in 2020
150 possible points (awarded at 1.5 x the average Metascore)

(2) % of scored products with good reviews (Metascore of at least 75)
100 possible points (ex: 80% good = 80 points)

(3) % of scored products with bad reviews (49 or lower; in this case, a lower % is better)
100 possible points (ex: 20% bad = 80 points)

(4) Number of "great" titles (Metascore of 90 or higher, min. 7 reviews)
Awarded as 5 bonus points for each distinct title with a 90+ score

Note that the Metascore average (the first factor) counts slightly more than the other factors. Only publishers with five or more distinct titles released last year are included in our rankings.

Finally, note that iOS games are excluded from all calculations. All scores in this report are from March 3, 2021, and U.S. release dates and publishers are used for all games except those never released in the U.S.

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#47 through #30

#47 No Gravity Games
12 products (11 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 55.3
149.7 total points

#46 Silesia Games
5 products (5 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 54.3
161.5 total points

#45 tinyBuild
11 products (6 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 59.1
170.5 total points

#44 Blowfish Studios
12 products (5 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 62.5
177.2 total points

#43 Modus Games
20 products (6 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 60.1
180.1 total points

#42 Merge Games
16 products (7 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 57.9
180.5 total points

#41 Ratalaika Games
8 products (6 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 57.7
186.5 total points

#40 Wired Productions
10 products (5 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 65.1
207.6 total points

#39 All in! Games
10 products (6 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 66.4
209.5 total points

#38 Bandai Namco
43 products (21 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 65.8
210.3 total points

#37 Nacon [including Bigben Interactive]
33 products (11 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 65.7
216.7 total points

#36 ININ Games
10 products (6 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 67.2
220.8 total points

#35 QubicGames
5 products (5 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 67.2
220.8 total points

#34 Curve Digital
13 products (5 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 65.3
221.1 total points

#33 PQube
17 products (9 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 69.3
221.5 total points

#32 Koei Tecmo
15 products (7 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 70.1
225.1 total points

#31 Headup Games
10 products (6 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 73.6
230.4 total points

#30 Daedalic Entertainment
11 products (6 distinct titles) - average Metascore: 70.1
232.4 total points

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