Forums - Fallout 3 pirated already

What? Those are the fucking owners, Blizz/Beth have their own publishing divisions and oversee their own projects. This isn't SirTech/Independent Publishing, this is a company who has investors and develop their games with input and support from the higher ups.
Bethesda packages and releases their owns games, and so does Blizzard, if anything, Vivendi and ZeniMax only help distribute the games and don't have direct impact on the development like a typical publisher/developer duo where the publisher doesn't own the developer but rather enters into a contract with them.

Big difference, if you're going to tell me that a project managed by a third party publisher is the same thing as a company that's composed of its own assets and only surreptitiously managed by an owner then that's just silly.

Bethesda and Blizzard's development departments work on their own games, dictate the release and development specifications of their projects and ultimately package, release and then distribute (with help and applied marketing from the owning company which have more control in these areas). Therefore Blizzard and Bethesda are responsible for their own marketing and publicity when it comes to content. Todd Howard is one of the lead members of Bethesda, and he's one of the idiots who spills bullshit along with Emil and Hines.

There are situations where you could blame the publishers for everything easily, this goes especially for corporations like Interplay or EA which were (or still are) notorious for forcing their subsidiaries into deadlines or changes on par with the requirements that they forced upon the developers.

Companies like Blizzard or Bethesda don't suffer from that, they're very large, very contained companies that manage nearly everything with the only significant effects from the owners applying to use and distribution of their properties.