Metacritic has released its annual list of the best game publishers, which are based solely on how good their 2025 releases are.
As we all know, Metacritic is the premier game rating website, so they have access to virtually all of the data they need. Using that data, they catalogue the best publishers by having a four-factor rating system. Average Metascore for all games released in 2025, % of scored products with good reviews, % of scored products with bad reviews, and Number of “great” titles, a metascore of 90 or higher, all factor in to final score. However, only publishers with five or more distinct titles can be considered for the rankings.
There are 28 publishers ranked this year, but we’re going to focus on the top five. If you’re curious about the rest, check out the full list. Following Take-Two Interactive and Sega, who have both won this Metacritic competition twice before, both in 2011 and 2014 for Take-Two and 2016 and 2021 for Sega, is Microsoft. Microsoft has a leg up in the competition due to its subsidiaries like Bethesda Softworks, Activision, and Blizzard, plus the actual Xbox Game Studios. Microsoft snagged the fifth spot with games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 and The Outer Worlds 2, with some help from Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and the Indiana Jones and The Great Circle DLC.
Number four is a relatively obscure publisher by the name of Thunderful. Thundeful, 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.
Getting into the top three starts with Capcom, who have nearly missed the second-place ranking by a mere 0.2 points. Led by its premiere game, Monster Hunter Wilds, Capcom has earned a Metacritic score of 322.2 points, which is further backed up by games like Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection and the phenomenal Resident Evil Requiem.
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.
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. Helped along by titles like Dragon Quest and other Final Fantasy games, it has achieved the number one spot. Even its worst game of the year, SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered, had high praise from critics.
An expected but unexpected list of publishers from the minds at Metacritic.
