[Mirikon]

The Azzies are definitely the most evil fraggers in the corporate world. As for who's got the second spot, I'd put NeoNET and MCT tied, for their fun and games experimenting on technomancers and other digital entities. All the megas are bad on that count, but MCT and NeoNET are the most visible (and most active) of those. Hell, let's do this top ten style, yeah?

Mirikon's Top 10 Most Evil Megacorps:
10: Wuxing - Sure, they've got questionable things, like any corp over a certain size, but they're not nearly as bad as the other contenders on the list.
9: Saeder-Krupp - Surprisingly, Saeder-Krupp doesn't really bring much of the ultimate evil, especially not as much as other megas. They are environmental nightmares, and their draconian policies (sorry for the pun) are the things of legend, but that isn't 'evil' so much as the standard megacorporate ruthlessness.
8: Renraku - Like SK, Renraku's got a reputation for ruthlessness that is the megacorporate norm, but as far as 'evil'? I just don't see it for the most part, with the exception of their lingering racism (and by lingering racism, I mean "just as much as it used to be").
7: Shiawase - What happens when you take a family feud and make it a megacorp? The answer is Shiawase. Constant infighting and backstabbing, but they don't engage as much in the truly nasty drek. Or at least they don't get caught as much. They're too busy turning their knives on eachother to do the true nasty, IMO.
6: Evo - They've been doing e-ghost experiments as well, but not as bad as NeoNET. The 'EvoPeople' thing is a bit freaky, though, which makes me uneasy about their true motives.
5: Horizon - They creep me way the frag out. They aren't as out there as others further down the list, but the whole deal about trying to actively control people to be like something out of Stepford Wives or Invasion of the Body Snatchers makes me want to see them go down in flames. Especially now that they're going into zealot mode. Zealots who say "Horizon is good. What is good for Horizon must be good," scare the hell out of me. Give me SK over these guys any day.
4: Ares - The 'all-American' megacorp has become a hive. The guy in charge is under the delusion that he can control the situation. This isn't just like Jurassic Park writ large. It is like someone seeing the dinosaurs wrecking havoc in a major North American city, and then saying, "You know what we need? More dinosaurs!"
3: NeoNET - One of the leaders in metahuman experimentation during the technomancer scare, and current king of experimenting on e-ghosts, the only thing that keeps them from being higher ranked is that the various factions will burn the place to the ground to keep their rivals from getting ahead.
2: Mitsuhama - I'll give the edge to MCT, if only because they've been bringing the evil longer, and they're utterly unrepentant about it. Plus, coming up with technomancer cyborgs just rubs me the wrong way.
1: Aztechnology - When you are up to so much nasty drek that a great dragon has to blow himself up to stop you from bringing the apocalypse, and you've started burning holes in the manasphere all over your country, you've safely locked the top spot.

[Nath]

Isn't Ares pretty much the UCAS/CAS military industrial complex as well as the cops in much of the country?

They used to be, but Conspiracy Theories downplayed that angle a lot, making the current Colloton administration a sworn enemy of Ares, with the willingness and the ability to sever links and contracts between Ares and the DoD.

[Black]

(3rd) Mistuhama
Too closely linked to the Yakuza.  Tend to be fairly Ruthless.  Experimented on Technomancers

(9th) Wuxing
Low profile.  May even be a good corp... but most likely they just slip under the radar

Wuxing connection to the Triads is as strong as MCT connection to the Yakuza. It's just that the Triads presence in Hong Kong is so pervasive that they don't need something as obvious as stockholding and board seats.

True. Probably all the earilier edition stuff where they(Mitstuhama) tend to be 'not very nice'.  But I would still keep the same ratings based on human experiementation on Technomancers.  Not sure if Wuxing has done anything at a similar level.

[Black]

Renraku
ignoring the Deus incident, fairly harmless.  Have started kidnapping CAS politicians for some reason.  General rumours are that they have been 'too quiet'.

It's strange to me that Renraku was always one of the main Bad Guys in the videmo games. Also, they allied with the UB before Cermak, where they were using homeless folks as hosts/test subjects.
I don't remember the reason they felt the need to ally with a non-profit, but there you go.

I thought it was Crash Cart which was working with the bugs?

[Black]

Renraku
ignoring the Deus incident, fairly harmless.  Have started kidnapping CAS politicians for some reason.  General rumours are that they have been 'too quiet'.

The Deus incident was the result of a long set of AI experiments that had repurcussions beyond the arcology. Aren't they also a driving force behind the new Matrix GOD squad?

Ah... but that was back when they didn't understand AI and they saw them as something you owned, built, and pulled apart as required.  The results... were unexpected.  More accident then evil.  Perhaps arrogant, foolish, but not really experiment on humans or make deals with known threats.

[Mirikon]

Renraku
ignoring the Deus incident, fairly harmless.  Have started kidnapping CAS politicians for some reason.  General rumours are that they have been 'too quiet'.

It's strange to me that Renraku was always one of the main Bad Guys in the videmo games. Also, they allied with the UB before Cermak, where they were using homeless folks as hosts/test subjects.
I don't remember the reason they felt the need to ally with a non-profit, but there you go.

I thought it was Crash Cart which was working with the bugs?

Renraku was involved with Project Hope, I believe.

[Black]

Sorry, your right.  Renraku was using Project Hope to experiment on the participants.  But I don't think they knew about the bugs.

Alas, this puts them in the same camp as the other corps who have experimented on unwilling tesssst sssubjectss.  Sorry, swallowed a bug.

Soon it will be hard to name a corp which has crossed serious ethical lines on human experimentation...

[Reaver]

Sorry, your right.  Renraku was using Project Hope to experiment on the participants.  But I don't think they knew about the bugs.

Alas, this puts them in the same camp as the other corps who have experimented on unwilling tesssst sssubjectss.  Sorry, swallowed a bug.

Soon it will be hard to name a corp which has crossed serious ethical lines on human experimentation...

IS there a Corp that hasn't played "doctor" on metahumans??? I am willing to bet they all have. we just havn't heard about it.

[Lorebane24]

Mirikon's Top 10 Most Evil Megacorps:
6: Evo - They've been doing e-ghost experiments as well, but not as bad as NeoNET. The 'EvoPeople' thing is a bit freaky, though, which makes me uneasy about their true motives.

Oh my.  What is this?

[Reaver]

Mirikon's Top 10 Most Evil Megacorps:
6: Evo - They've been doing e-ghost experiments as well, but not as bad as NeoNET. The 'EvoPeople' thing is a bit freaky, though, which makes me uneasy about their true motives.

Oh my.  What is this?

It's Evo's Transhumanist vision of the future!

where man and machine are indistinguishable from each other.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

I'd define Evo's transhumanist agenda as being less 'where does man end and machine begin', and more as 'when you can become 'someone else' at will, then we are all human'.  They're not trying to meld man and machine, they're trying to blur the distinctions between metaraces.  What, the argument goes, is the effective difference between a strong Troll (STR 9) and a very strong cyberneticized human (STR 9)?

As for 'sliding scale of SR Ebil!!!', well - I don't have a 1-10 list.  All of them are nasty, wicked, and/or corrupt in their own way.  Aztechnology does blood magic and all that?  Yeah, but they provide 70% of what most characters eat in Seattle, and when you get down to it, they make good products.  How often, after all, does blood magic affect the average citizen of Seattle?  As often as they see the Great Dragon Lofwyr, perhaps, whose policies and leverage as the largest corporation on the planet are his personal crow-bar to not only move the world, but also to beat the shit out of anyone trying to stop him from doing so?

None of them are 'harmless'.  I was, however, especially amused at the continuing viewpoint that Shiawase's lethality is focussed inwards - which has essentially never been the case.  Oh, everyone goggles at the Family taking shots at each other, but some of the hardest gut-punches for or against the shadows has come from - drumroll please - Shiawase.  Shiawase arm-wrestled for extraterritoriality and won.  Shiawase built data analysis (MFID, kids) into a lethally elegant form of assassination with or without a bullet.  Shiawase was the essential core behind Nihon Uber Alles and the push in Japan against metahumans, and that core remains, despite the Empress' work and the face-job they've been doing to make them seem nicer outside Japan.

Do I 'like' one the most?  Yeah, I like Evo the best; IMO Buttercup has to play politics in order to get enough leverage to be able to expose the crap she doesn't like and then wipe it out, but again IMO, she's one of the few top-end movers-and-shakers that is out-and-out working less for great power and control and more for great good.  I grant, though, that sometimes 'great good' goes through some deep muck, but hey ...

[CanRay]

"Transhumanism is about how technology will eventually help us overcome the problems that have, up until now, been endemic to human nature. Cyberpunk is about how technology won't." — Stephen Lea Sheppard

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Which works in a world where there's nothing but humans, CanRay, and I agree that part of Evo's agenda is exactly that 'overcom(ing) the problems ... endemic to human nature' - but my reading leads me to draw the conclusion above - that Evo is specifically attempting to take down the general 'us vs. them' barriers being built, consciously or unconsciously, between the various metahuman races - and even between them and the other sentient races.  After all, pay enough to Evo and you could find out what it's like to be a dragon ... or at least something draconic.

[Magnaric]

Evo has always struck me as not necessarily the "best" of the AAA Megacorps, but perhaps one of the least malevolent. At their top levels, (IE Buttercup), they seem to be genuinely interested in Metahumanity's future progress, be it on a social or technological/biological level. Granted, sometimes that means they perform somewhat...invasive and radical experiments, but with them I always saw it as more or an "ends justifies the means" scenario, with the Ends in that case being trying to improve all people to a higher ideal(what that ideal is depends on who you talk to).

Now, that isn't to say they can't be as ruthless as the other megacorps; they absolutely can. Just they're usually a bit more polite and honest about it. If you read some of the fluff from Jackpointers about them, they say that an EVO Johnson will still stab you in the back if he has to or is ordered to, but it never feels like it's something he wants to do out of spite, and he'll usually apologize first.

[GiraffeShaman]

Agreed with MCT as number 2. I don't think anyone will disagree with Azzies as 1. MCT also is infamous for the Zero Zones and in general just shooting to kill, torturing prisoners, and the like. They have zero tolerance for shadowrunners who don't follow their orders to the letter. It's common practice for their Mr. Johnsons to call themselves "Mr. Bunraku", indicating their general view of shadowrunners, that they are all whores. They're just huge dicks in general, and it's quite an accomplishment of Aztechnology to surpass them.

Crashcart was pretty much owned by the bugs, but I don't think it was tied to a Mega at the time. A Wasp shaman was running it and using it as part of the bug conspiracy. It's in the 2XS novel. It was later bought by a Mega I believe, but that was after the big FBI investigation took down the UB, and I think Crashcart was wrapped up in that.