Metacritic's 12th Annual Game Publisher Rankings

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – March 9, 2022

Which game publishers released the best games in 2021? For the 12th 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 2021 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 2021
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 January 31, 2022, and U.S. release dates and publishers are used for all games except those never released in the U.S.

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#27: Take-Two Interactive

Previous year's rank: 22
Average Metascore for 2021 releases: 69.1
14 scored products (6 distinct titles): 43% good, 14% bad
"Great" games: 1
Total points: 237.3

Take-Two's rank fell for the second straight year, as did the publisher's average Metascore (down from 71.4 the prior year), which includes games released under the 2K Games, 2K Sports, Private Division, and Rockstar Games labels. In fact, it was the latter—traditionally a well-reviewed publisher that makes Take-Two's highest-scoring games—that was a major cause of this year's decline, thanks to a reissue of three older Grand Theft Auto games in a poorly received (and conceived?) new compilation on modern consoles that ranks among the very worst products ever released by Rockstar Games. Take-Two, however, did have one stellar release in 2021, courtesy of its Private Division "indie" label: Hades, which was the year's highest-scoring game from any publisher on both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles. Going forward, look for Take-Two to dive further into the mobile gaming market, spurred on by its pending acquisition of Zynga (through a deal that is expected to close in June).

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