Um it actually was the publisher though, they control the release of the game.
Lucasarts- Had agreed to give Obsidian an extension past holiday 2004 for Kotor 2, then out of nowhere cancelled that agreement and forced Obsidian to ship in Dec. 2004 (roughly a year after kotor 1 by the way). This resulted in the infamous "unfinished" ending and a lot of cut content that was planned for release thanks to the delay they were promised being pulled.
Sega- Out of nowhere they stopped funding Alpha Protocol once it was near completion and yet still delayed the game simply because they didn't like the original release date. The game went something like 7 months just sitting there not being improved or bug tested at all until it released in June 2010. Obsidian does share blame and they've admitted that they wasted a lot of time at the start of development not knowing how they wanted to make the game, but once they had settled in it was on Sega.
Zenimax/Bethesda- They were supposed to handle QA for New Vegas as most publishers do but seeing the state the game was in you'd wonder if they actually did anything to it. Plus it was made and released in only a year. Think about that, a full HD next gen open world game with the writing depth and deep RPG systems NV had...made and released in only 1 year. It's inconceivable nowadays. The game could have been delayed to work on bugs more but Zenimax chose not to do that.
Obsidian can only do so much as an independent developer who relies on the contracts they sign. Yeah they have had some time management issues in the past but many of the problems they've run into have been publisher related, stuff way out of their control. Now they've dealt with THQ dying and they're dealing with Matt and Trey's relentless perfectionism. I wouldn't be surprised if that's why this game is taking so long. It's not like the actual gameplay and RPG stuff looks really in depth or anything, which is what Obsidian is handling and I've already mentioned how they've released 2 of the best RPGs in recent history in only 1 year of development. So I really doubt all of these delays are on Obsidian.
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