Valve consistently anger or frustrate their core fanbase (e.g. the hot-air boycott over Left 4 Dead 2, the almost decade-long whining about Counterstrike game mechanics, and of course the frustration over HL3 / HL2:ep3).

But the fans never seem to leave, and their zealousness and numbers only ever grow. Even with the historically poor SDK support and release cycle, there's still has a solid, active modding community even as the Source engine starts to look a little tired.

And at the same time they're pioneering digital game publishing and distribution, providing really interesting services to their competitors (Steamworks), pushing the frontiers of their core game niches, and are astoundingly profitable.

That's an amazing example to aspire to.