Valve

http://www.valvesoftware.com/

These guys have made some great games, and they have also made it very easy to host multiplayer games online, no router config bullshit required. Having said that, I do have a beef with them. As they have grown larger they seem to be far less friendly to modders than they used to. This is unfortunate, especially since a mod called Counterstrike help to make them huge. If you take an old game, say Day of Defeat, that game had TONS of different mods. Cigarette bazookas, RC cola grenades, custom player models like Jesus, Hitler, Daffy Duck, a flamethrower, the hook, it just goes on and on. You could also get bots for it, which was great for unpopular maps or playing it off line. Then they came out with DOD Source. Better graphics, but far less modder friendly. Not to mention, every time steam updates, it fucks up the few mods people have made for it. It also has no bots, as they coded it so it's almost impossible for anyone to make bots for it. For a while they were working with someone on a tfc2 bot, but suddenly stopped speaking with that person and now just say "we don't think bots are good for multiplayer games". Pardon me, but that's just arrogant. Why won't Valve let the modders and gamers decide that? Gamers won't play on servers they don't like, so bot servers would be rare if everyone hated them. In addition to that, you can configure the server so that bots get kicked as real players join in. So when you get a decent amount of players, there are no longer any bots on that server. If the server clears out, the bots come back, so if just one guy wants to play on that server, he can. Please, someone tell me why this is a BAD thing? Just a pipe dream, but I wish Valve would remember their roots.