Indie Pay-What-You-Want Bundle Reaches $1 Million

Spinnacre writes "The week-long Humble Indie Bundle, a pay-what-you-feel-adequate promotion, reached a million dollars in total contributions with just 50 minutes of sale time remaining. For a minimum price of a penny, gamers could get DRM-free downloads for World of Goo, Gish, Aquaria, Lugaru, Penumbra: Overture, and Samorost 2. The bundle gained great success immediately after being featured on sites such as Ars Technica and Slashdot for followup blog posts about game piracy and multi-platform gaming." According to this tweet from Steve Swink, the milestone means that several games will release their source code. In fact Wolfire is in the process of creating a public source code repository for Lugaru; Aquaria, Gish, and Penumbra: Overture are also due to be opened up within the next week.

Comments

How's this compare to total sales?

[Bamfarooni]

I wonder how this compares to the total sales all 5 (now 6) games had prior to being included in the bundle?

Oh, and awesome job, guys. Goo is a great game. Haven't had time to get to the rest yet.

Re:How's this compare to total sales?

[ElderKorean]

I wonder how this compares to the total sales all 5 (now 6) games had prior to being included in the bundle?

Oh, and awesome job, guys. Goo is a great game. Haven't had time to get to the rest yet.

I am wondering the same: re previous sales.
I've previously purchased World of Goo, and play it every so often, not seriously but it fills in time.

Having just purchased them, I'll play the rest over time as well - hopefully after my assignments are out of the way.

Re:How's this compare to total sales?

[KDR_11k]

I think WoG did at least 1.5 million sales, that was the number they threw around some time ago when talking about the performance of the WiiWare version (it was the total number, I think the WiiWare one sold something like 800k).

Finally

[CasualFriday]

Maybe this will give a wake-up call to the more money-hungry developers out there. I'm looking at you, EA.

Re:Finally

[nlawalker]

Let's see... as of right now, the total contributed is $1,030,536, and the total number of contributions is 113,838, making the average contribution $9.05 for a bundle of four games (5 if the people who purchased the bundle before Penumbra was added still get it).

An executive at EA just blew his nose on $1,030,536. They are not interested.

Re:Finally

[Pojut]

You have to remember though, EA has FAR more cash with which it can reach non-hardcore gamers (i.e. people that enjoy playing games, but aren't an active part of the culture and don't pay attention to independent games).

Honestly, do you think the average Gamestop-goer has even heard of all of these games, much less knew about the bundle? With some serious money behind a marketing campaign, something like this could have been far bigger.

Re:Finally

[butalearner]

$1M in one week for games that are a couple years old? I daresay they wouldn't mind that at all.

Re:Finally

[u-235-sentinel]

Let's see... as of right now, the total contributed is $1,030,536, and the total number of contributions is 113,838, making the average contribution $9.05 for a bundle of four games (5 if the people who purchased the bundle before Penumbra was added still get it).

An executive at EA just blew his nose on $1,030,536. They are not interested.

Fortunately I'm not interested in EA games (except for the Wii... Gotta have the wii version ::grinz::)

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

..."blew his nose"....

Would that be in, or out his nose? (nudge nudge, wink wink ...)

Re:Finally

[interkin3tic]

An executive at EA just blew his nose on $1,030,536.

And then tried to figure out how to best claim that indie game developers stole from EA.

"Let's see, a million dollars. That would be three million dollars that would have been spent on an EA licensed version of world of goo. FOUR million if you count the last half of the game as downloadable content. 6 times 4 million... 24 million...

Betty get in here! Immediate press release! Indie developers have just stolen 32 million dollars from the video game industry!"

Re:Finally

[longacre]

Thing is, a lot of folks probably felt like they were donating to a good cause when they paid for this bundle, and upped their payments accordingly, whereas there would be no positive karma from giving more than a penny to EA.

Re:Finally

[Tom]

An executive at EA just blew his nose on $1,030,536. They are not interested.

Who cares? I'm damn sure both the customers and the developers in this deal are happy as can be. So everyone actually involved in the deal is happy - that's good business.

And I'm pretty sure the developers made a shitload more money than they expected.

Re:Finally

[shish]

Haven't seen the others yet, but World of Goo at least is not only in my local games shops, but in my local supermarket where they only stock the massively popular things (Sims, WoW, $football_game_of_the_week, etc)

Re:Finally

[Antiocheian]

Do you own a chessboard ?

How old chess is ?

Re:Finally

[rxan]

Except that it still got pirated.

Re:Finally

[spun]

To answer your question, "who cares," let me just point out that the post you responded to was not making a point, it was responding to a point. The point was "Why doesn't EA do this?" and the response was "because it isn't as profitable as the things EA is doing now." I hope you get the point, your point was beside the point. How many was that? Seven? Point point point!

Sorry, I just meow watched "Super Troopers" and that joke is stuck in my head meow.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they said they still don't feel like they got "ripped" off, whereas apparently Ubisoft feels ripped off if your net connection is spotty.

Do some reading: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Saving-a-penny----pirating-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle

Seriously, they make over a million bucks, donate over 300k to charity, and are completely happy; but you want to make mountains out of molehills when they don't even feel that way!

Re:Finally

[Dishevel]

Thing is, a lot of folks probably felt like they were donating to a good cause when they paid for this bundle, and upped their payments accordingly, whereas there would be no positive karma from giving more than a penny to EA.

Kind of a really wrong thing to say. If EA were to offer some of their better older games in a bundle and let the downloader set his own price. I would pay. I would pay to show EA that it can work. I would reard EA for trying the model. As I suspect many would. If all you want to do is whine and bithc and then fuck them over if they try to do the right thing then I think that maybe you are a bit too filled with hate to do yourself any good.

Re:Finally

[Rennt]

I didn't know Penumbra was a late addition, but I did get Samorost 2 for nothing after purchasing the bundle.

It was a pleasant experience I could certainly get used to. Never before have I paid an agreed price for something and had the publisher contact me with: "we've changed the deal - in your favour. Head back to our website to download your extra shit".

Re:Finally

[jyx]

An executive at EA just blew his nose on $1,030,536. They are not interested.

As someone else mentioned, a few *old* indie games have made over a million bucks in the span of a week. This is news worthy.

If your having trouble in understanding why, your not thinking about it properly.

This isn't about impressing or replacing the EA's of the world its about:

1) Demonstrating that you don't need a multi million dollar empire to create fun games that people want to play.
2) Small developers making a reasonable/good living by developing games.
3) (potentially) open sourced works != no more income.

Personally, I'm saddened that when ever there is a story about some open/gpl project making money, the highest modded posts all say "But [closed multi mega corp] makes 3 times that much during coffee break". What is this obsession with striking it rich? Why do we look down upon people making a "reasonable" amount from their efforts because other entities with questionable business ethics make more money?

Re:Finally

[OjM]

You didn't know Penumbra was late addition, because it was not. :p Also, it was awesome, we were counting and getting excited about the code release at #wolfire.

Re:Finally

[khellendros1984]

I would pay...but not as much as I would for indie cross-platform games with a bundled charity donation. I paid a good deal above the average payment, but I think if I say a similar package from [major developer], I might pay something around the $10-ish average from this sale.

Re:Finally

[scottwilkins]

Pojut, do you really understand what the internet is about? Few games are truly "hidden" from all gamers these days. Indie games have a very open and easy to find access to the average player.

Re:Finally

[ElderKorean]

Thing is, a lot of folks probably felt like they were donating to a good cause when they paid for this bundle, and upped their payments accordingly, whereas there would be no positive karma from giving more than a penny to EA.

My thoughts too.

I just purchased the bundle, though I've bought World of Goo previously.

I paid more than the current average for these games. Though that amount is still more money then I have ever given to EA.

Re:Finally

[PitaBred]

So? All that proves is that piracy is like a force of nature, and not worth worrying about. It will happen no matter what you do, so it's better to use it as advertising and give people reasons to play, instead of fucking over paying customers with DRM that does nothing but push people toward piracy

Re:Finally

[shish]

An executive at EA just blew his nose on $1,030,536. They are not interested.

How much did each indie programmer make, compared to the disposable code-grunts at EA?

Re:Finally

[Tom]

Point for you. :-)

Yes, EA doesn't do it because right now, their business model works better. For them. In the short term. We'll see how much longer.

Re:Finally

[Jesus_666]

True. They also cleverly added per-platform statistics enticing people to enter higher numbers in order to look good in comparison. I paid 11 USD. Why? Because the Mac average was at 10 USD.

Re:Finally

[Jesus_666]

Lando Customer: "Samorost 2? That was never part of our agreement!"
Darth Wolfire: "I am altering the agreement. Pray I will alter it further. Speaking of which... How do you feel about open source software?"

Re:Finally

[rxan]

It proves several things. It proves that even though pirates claim they pirate because of DRM, low quality, or low value products, they will still pirate even when those needs are met. It also proves that pirates are so petty that even 1 cent is too much for them. Even when that money would go to charity.

I agree that paying customers shouldn't be screwed by DRM. I don't see how this proves that piracy isn't worth worrying about. I'm sure that those developers and/or charities could have used that money.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this obsession with striking it rich? Why do we look down upon people making a "reasonable" amount from their efforts because other entities with questionable business ethics make more money?

I love that comment. Great point.

Re:Finally

[zeroshade]

People keep saying "pirates" this and "pirates" that, is there some central conglomeration of pirates that I don't know about? Do they have meetings with eye patches and parrots, organizing their stories about the reasons they will give for why they pirate? No? Oh yea, "pirates" are an amorphous group of millions of individuals that all have their own reasons for what they do. Is it possible there are a number of pirates that fit your description of being "so petty that even 1 cent is too much"? Absolutely. Does this in anyway invalidate the idea of pirating "because of DRM, low quality, or low value products"? Absolutely not. Some people have convictions and would normally pirate things but in this instance paid. Others have no care for anything and just want stuff for free. It's very disingenuous to try to lump every single person who pirates into one category of "pirates" when they all have different reasons. As others have said, maybe they were in an area of the world where they had no access to any of the payment methods and thereby could not get the games legally by any means.

I don't see how this proves that piracy isn't worth worrying about.

This bundle has had a piracy rate WELL below the average piracy rate of PC games, even if you raise the estimate by claiming it's a lower bound (which really based on the facts, the actual rate could be higher OR lower than the 25%). This alone proves that something about this resulted in much more people paying for their own copies. Whether it was the charities, supporting the idea of pay what you want, or merely being happy for no DRM, it just proves that piracy will happen no matter what. Therefore don't worry bout piracy, worry about appealing to your customers enough so that they will want to give you money for the product.

I'm sure that those developers and/or charities could have used that money.

Everyone could use some money, but can you say how many of the people who pirated it would have otherwise given any money at all? No, you can't.

Re:Finally

[Dog-Cow]

Obviously you don't understand people. The average gamer is not scouring gaming sites looking for their next hit. They are buying Wiis and buying whatever games their local shops carry.

Re:Finally

[dangitman]

Darth Wolfire: "I am altering the agreement. Pray I will alter it further. Speaking of which... How do you feel about open source software?"

KHHHAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNN!!

... oh wait, wrong movie.

Re:Finally

[dangitman]

Never before have I paid an agreed price for something and had the publisher contact me with: "we've changed the deal - in your favour. Head back to our website to download your extra shit

This is standard practice in the indie-software-bundle world. MacHeist, MacUpdate Promo, and the three other indie Mac bundles I can't remember the names of, have all done this. It creates a great sense of satisfaction for the early purchasers, while simultaneously encouraging a surge in sales at the end.

Re:Finally

[rxan]

First paragraph is completely irrelevant. Would you rather we call them copyright infringers?

Second paragraph doesn't say anything about why piracy shouldn't be worried about.

And the last paragraph fails to show that charities and developers couldn't have used that money.

It's all well and good that you can find justification for pirating but it still doesn't make it OK.

Re:Finally

[zeroshade]

First paragraph is completely irrelevant. Would you rather we call them copyright infringers?

It seems that you need some reading comprehension. The first paragraph had absolutely nothing to do with what you call them. The entire point was that people should stop lumping all "pirates" or "copyright infringers" into one group and assuming they are some organized coalition of people that all have the same reasons.

It proves that even though pirates claim they pirate because of DRM, low quality, or low value products, they will still pirate even when those needs are met. It also proves that pirates are so petty that even 1 cent is too much for them. Even when that money would go to charity.

See, since the piracy rate was so low with the bundle, and there were still valid reasons for not paying (such as not being able to use any of the payment methods, to name one) it doesn't prove anything of the sort that you claim. Some pirates join in the DRM and low value arguments just to justify and then still pirated sure. However, a hell of a lot of people actually believe in those arguments and PAID for the bundle. You can't claim that this proves anything about ALL pirates. Then you say that "pirates are so petty that even 1 cent is too much for them." Again, maybe some pirates were that petty, but you don't know how many people who DO pirate games ended up giving money to these developers to support what they were doing. Call them whatever you want, but stop trying to assume that everyone has the same reasons. Stop trying to assume that if a couple of people are petty pirates with no morals that every single person who pirates is the same way.

Second paragraph doesn't say anything about why piracy shouldn't be worried about.

Piracy will happen no matter what, this proved it. However, this also proved that there are ways to reduce the piracy rate, none of which involved directly combating piracy. Considering the low rate of piracy here compared to other games, it shows that not worrying about piracy is BENEFICIAL. If you can't see this, then you're completely closed minded and assume that every one who pirates something, only does so because they want something for free and would definitely buy things they couldn't pirate. Perhaps you're a fan of 1 download = 1 lost sale? Try again.

And the last paragraph fails to show that charities and developers couldn't have used that money

What money? For all you know, every person who pirated it would not have paid thus the developers and charities would have made no extra money. Again, you're lumping every pirate together in as one group.

It's all well and good that you can find justification for pirating but it still doesn't make it OK.

Who said anything about me finding justification for pirating? I just have a pet peeve when people label an entire large group of individuals as something when it's very clear that not a single generalization about the group is correct for anything even close to a majority. If you want to comment about how you believe piracy is wrong, about why you think it's bad, go for it. Just don't try to use this to "prove" that the justifications and arguments that some pirates use are all BS when, it's a fact, that many many people who do pirate things, actually DID give money to the developers and charities to support this. Therefore it doesn't prove anything.

Re:Finally

[rxan]

I know I'm just feeding the troll. I really don't want to do this.

I didn't lump them into one group. I didn't say they had the same motives. Forbid me for using generalized terms! And it's still irrelevant.

In my linked article he stated that the number of people who couldn't pay for one reason or another was so low that he made contributions on their behalf. Even if people didn't have access to the payment system they could have emailed and arranged something. But most these pirates failed to even do that.

Piracy will happen no matter what, this proved it. However, this also proved that there are ways to reduce the piracy rate, none of which involved directly combating piracy. Considering the low rate of piracy here compared to other games, it shows that not worrying about piracy is BENEFICIAL. If you can't see this, then you're completely closed minded and assume that every one who pirates something, only does so because they want something for free and would definitely buy things they couldn't pirate. Perhaps you're a fan of 1 download = 1 lost sale? Try again.

It doesn't take an accountant to figure out that lowering the price of something makes people less likely to steal it. These methods lowered piracy but they did so only by throwing profitibility out the window. This was a charity but the point is to fight piracy and remain profitable. This is not the case here.

What money? For all you know, every person who pirated it would not have paid thus the developers and charities would have made no extra money. Again, you're lumping every pirate together in as one group.

There is value in IP. Money is usually exchanged for that value. The fact that people who pirated it would not have paid is irrelevant. Again, even if pirates decided to pay it was at the expense of profits.

Re:Finally

[nlawalker]

What is this obsession with striking it rich? Why do we look down upon people making a "reasonable" amount from their efforts because other entities with questionable business ethics make more money?

It's not about striking it rich, it's about making the companies who have struck it rich with less good-natured business models consider this method of distribution, or something like it, as an option.

I may be generalizing a bit much, but it appears that the "pay what you want" model has engendered a lot of goodwill. People like it, and want more game producers to use it. We're lamenting the fact that that's not going to happen when it's celebrating $1 million as a milestone when that's what the big publishers make in a fraction of the time.

Re:Finally

[zeroshade]

throwing profitability out the window

I don't know 5 developers who each earned over $140k in around a week by re-releasing games that had already been released and made money before. I would call that pretty damn profitable.

There is value in IP. Money is usually exchanged for that value. The fact that people who pirated it would not have paid is irrelevant. Again, even if pirates decided to pay it was at the expense of profits.

There is value in IP. This value is determined by those who would like to trade for it (such as paying money). The fact that most who pirated it would not have paid is very relevant. There's no sale lost, there's no profit that was not had in those downloads. Nothing that could have been done would have changed anything there and therefore this isn't your target market. You don't release a product expecting every one to buy it, you only expect the target market to pay for it (and consider it a bonus when others you didn't expect to do). So why focus on stopping a segment of the market that is not profitable at the expense of shrinking your target market (thus reducing profitability) by way of DRM or other things.

Consider the fact that even the developers stated that they believe there is no acceptable inconvenience for paying customers that is worth attempting to stop piracy. It would seem the developers have the same attitude that the piracy is irrelevant other than a curiosity.

I know I'm just feeding the troll. I really don't want to do this.

Om nom nom. Thanks for the meal...but I'm not a troll. Thanks for labeling someone who simply disagrees with you and is trying to have a discussion as just a troll. :)

Indie Gaming

[spqr0a1]

This shows that the giving freedom to your customers can work. It is a momentous slap in the face to the big boys like EA and ilk.

Re:Indie Gaming

[Spasmodeus]

I doubt EA and ilk would bother to get out of bed for a mere million dollars.

Re:Indie Gaming

[drinkypoo]

This shows that the giving freedom to your customers can work. It is a momentous slap in the face to the big boys like EA and ilk.

This also shows that people won't pay very much for games if you let them decide how much they will pay, and EA is not interested in getting less money per game. They want to bang out the big number of big-budget titles that let them play up in the rarefied air where, presumably, they pay little taxes, where cities in fact will offer them deals to come to their town and employ their best and brightest.

With that said, getting money is good, and this surely provided sales that wouldn't have otherwise been made. I was too lazy to even play the goo demo for example, and I bought the bundle and downloaded goo first. Shrug.

Re:Indie Gaming

[enderjsv]

I don't know. While I agree the current business model of larger games companies is outdated, I'm not sure this is the solution. A million dollars is pretty impressive for games that don't cost too much to develop. It's not quite as impressive for a game like modern warfare 2.

While this excites me for the smaller developers, realistically, I don't see this kind of business model really working for a larger developer like EA. I know a lot of you don't want to hear that, but I'm just trying to be realistic.

Re:Indie Gaming

[eln]

Yes it can work, for very small values of "work". It may be a legitimate route for independent games that need a gimmick like this to generate lots of press and get people to try their games. Of course, if your business model is dependent on getting lots of press, you pretty much have to be one of the first ones to do it, since the 27th company to do this isn't going to generate nearly as much press as the first one, and therefore likely won't have nearly this kind of success.

Basically, it's a way for small companies that would barely make beer money any other way to make a decent living (at least for the short term). It has not, however, disproved the more traditional model for selling games, which is still vastly more profitable. This is 5 games which combined managed to make $1 million. For a megacorp like EA, or any of the big-budget game publishing companies, $1 million is a rounding error.

Re:Indie Gaming

[u-235-sentinel]

This shows that the giving freedom to your customers can work. It is a momentous slap in the face to the big boys like EA and ilk.

This also shows that people won't pay very much for games if you let them decide how much they will pay, and EA is not interested in getting less money per game. They want to bang out the big number of big-budget titles that let them play up in the rarefied air where, presumably, they pay little taxes, where cities in fact will offer them deals to come to their town and employ their best and brightest.

With that said, getting money is good, and this surely provided sales that wouldn't have otherwise been made. I was too lazy to even play the goo demo for example, and I bought the bundle and downloaded goo first. Shrug.

It also demonstrated that the Linux users were willing to shell out double compared to Windows users for quality games.

And yes, I bought it and they run great under Ubuntu 10.04 :D

Re:Indie Gaming

[CannonballHead]

It also demonstrated that the Linux users were willing to shell out double compared to Windows users for quality games.

Scarcity means higher prices, perhaps? There aren't that many Linux games to begin with.

Re:Indie Gaming

[EvanED]

Scarcity means higher prices, perhaps? There aren't that many Linux games to begin with.

I suspect a bigger effect is "I want more games on my platform, so I want to encourage this sort of thing." (Related, but different.)

Re:Indie Gaming

[Darth_brooks]

It is a momentous slap in the face to the big boys like EA and ilk.

A million dollars isn't a momentous slap in the face to anyone. EA can waste that much money in about 15 minutes. Hell, how many chuzzlewit "senior associate vice president in charge of blah" types got million dollar bonuses at EA last year? A million bucks? Hell, the the amount donated to child's play is probably the amount spent by a studio on a major title's launch party.

Kudos to the indies, but a watershed moment this ain't.

Re:Indie Gaming

[TermV]

Linux and Mac users are more likely to be OS zealots willing to spend money to prove how much better they are than Windows users. It was pretty clever of them to make it into a competition between OSes, actually. I'm sure that was quite effective to drive sales.

Re:Indie Gaming

[CannonballHead]

I did mean "value" and not "higher [retail] prices" but hit submit before I noticed. hehe.

That said, I can see your reasoning as well.

Re:Indie Gaming

[butalearner]

I'm sure that was quite effective to drive sales.

It was indeed. They didn't release these results, but I was watching closely. The average donation jumped considerably once they split it by platform. The average Windows contribution was $6.75 or so when they split it, and it's near $8 now. There were similar but less significant jumps in the other platforms as well.

Re:Indie Gaming

[jthill]

They show stats on the fraction of Windows downloads, you know. Maybe do the teensiest bit of research, CannonballHead?

Re:Indie Gaming

[jthill]

Aww, crap. Just saw the price breakdown. Maybe I should do just a little more than the teensiest bit of research.

Re:Indie Gaming

[CannonballHead]

hehe... :) To be fair - I didn't do a whole lot of research either.

Re:Indie Gaming

[h4rr4r]

I personally would rather have this then yet another modern warfare. Sure the kids love that crap, but I played Doom already and will continue to play real defining games like HL2 and portal. I do not need nor want War Game Generic 12.

Re:Indie Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

No, complaining about piracy after incorrect math regarding downloads and having coverage throughout the web regarding your sale is why you would reach $1 million in sales. Great advertising pays dividends....

Re:Indie Gaming

[Jaysyn]

That's one million dollars in the week these games were offered. They have been & still are for sale via Impuse, Steam, etc...

Re:Indie Gaming

[Jafafa Hots]

I'm ok with hearing that, since I personally don't give a rat's ass what works for EA.

Would you believe copyright law and the business model it was intended to create when it was originally conceived was NOT designed with a mind towards what was best for the publisher? At least not exclusively?

It's true! Imagine that!

Re:Indie Gaming

[Jafafa Hots]

Maybe a software publisher who doesn't give a shit about a million bucks, and who wastes that much in 15 minutes is not actually necessarily a good thing to have around, not necessarily a good thing to be designing laws to promote the creation and sustenance of?

Just a thought.

Re:Indie Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

This also shows that allowing them the lesser price doesn't necessarily cut your profit as you end up with more customers buying non-physical items from your exclusive infinite supply.

Re:Indie Gaming

[Draek]

I missed the part of your post where you explained why we need games like Modern Warfare 2 to be made. And before you reply with "normal people" and all that crap, let me remind you that the world's most popular game is Solitaire, followed by Minesweeper.

Re:Indie Gaming

[RMingin]

Exactly. I already had World of Goo, and haven't even fired up any of the Indie Bundle, despite buying it last week. I will get to it, I paid primarily to make sure things like the Bundle keep happening.

Re:Indie Gaming

[OjM]

Who is complaining and where is the incorrect math? They did say it's not all piracy, but there are other pretty legit reasons. RTFA and otherwise know what you are talking about.

Re:Indie Gaming

[enderjsv]

Well, that's probably because I never said anything about "need". My post has nothing to do with "need". In fact, in the grand scheme of things, there really isn't a need for ANY game, no matter what the budget. Not quite sure where all this need talk is coming from.

My point is simply that a pay-what-you-want business model wouldn't work for a game with a high budget. Be it EA or Activision or Valve or whatever. Take your pick.

Now, if what you were actually trying to say with that misplaced sarcastic first sentence is that you, personally, don't think there is a need for a high budget games market, then I agree with you. As I mentioned above, there's not really a need for ANY games market. But while there might not be a need for a high budget games market, it exists, whether you like it or not. A company like EA exists to tap into that market. It's beneficial for them to come up with the best business model possible when attempting to do so. I'm of the opinion that a pay-what-you-want business model wouldn't work for such a market. That's all I'm saying.

Just in case you feel like responding with more pointless sarcasm, let me save you some time by assuring you that I get it. You're too cool for high budget games. Congrats.

Re:Indie Gaming

[enderjsv]

Well then, replace "Modern Warfare 2" in my original post with "Half life 2" and maybe the point would make more sense to you.

Re:Indie Gaming

[enderjsv]

Who's talking about copyright law? Pretty sure my post had nothing to do with copyright. My post is about a business model that works (or doesn't) for high budget games. And the examples I gave are trivial. My argument could be applied to any developer or publisher developing high budget games, from EA and Activision to Valve, Nintendo or Sega.

Besides, paper wasn't originally meant to wipe my ass, but it does a pretty damn good job of it.

Re:Indie Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep up, EA arent the big bad boys anymore. Besides they give quite a lot to Indy talent these days.

Re:Indie Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

The price of these games on Linux is higher to begin with. Windows users are used to be able to get these games for $5 each or so, at Steam sales or elsewhere. Linux gamers don't have that choice. So I think it's natural for Linux users to place higher value on these games. It's similar for console gamers, I believe. Windows gamers tend to mention the high price of games are one cause for piracy, but the price is typically less than on Consoles, where there's less piracy.

Re:Indie Gaming

[muckracer]

> I doubt EA and ilk would bother to get out of bed for a mere million dollars.

Perhaps it's time that they do again. Can't wait for the artificial 'Value'-Bubble to burst and artists (whether game, music, movies etc.) returning to actually appreciating that people enjoy their stuff, instead of constantly bitching about money issues.

Re:Indie Gaming

[muckracer]

> Hell, how many chuzzlewit "senior associate vice president in charge of blah" types got million dollar bonuses at EA last year? A million bucks?
> Hell, the the amount donated to child's play is probably the amount spent by a studio on a major title's launch party.

And that's precisely why EA CAN'T afford to sell their games cheaply, whereas developers with little overhead can! I know who'll I buy from: the one that doesn't pass their extravagant costs BESIDES actual development and artistry on to me!

Re:Indie Gaming

[NickFortune]

While this excites me for the smaller developers, realistically, I don't see this kind of business model really working for a larger developer like EA.

Quite true. Still, the interesting thing is if you look at why this wouldn't work for EA.

As I understand it, the corporate strategy of EA and their ilk has been to develop increasingly expensive games, in the hopes of raising the barrier to entry into the market. This is why a big game has a credits list like a Holywood movie, and is often developed with a Hollywood scale budget. The rationale, I believe is that if they can raise the expected production values to the point where newcomers can no longer compete, they can prevent competitors from emerging, and keep the price of games set high.

The Humble Bundle, however, demonstrates that this isn't working. It is not only possible to make fun games on a modest budget, but it's possible to make good money in the process.

Now this by itself isn't necessarily a problem for EA. On the other hand, those over-engineered games mean they have to price their games at a certain level. That price point is rather more than a lot of people would happily pay. This encourages piracy, which encourages the studios to adopt ever nastier DRM, which discourages sales.

Meanwhile the Humble Bundle has shown that you can make a profit giving the damn things away, at least so long as you don't have delusions of being a Hollywood Mogul. So we can expect to see more small scale games developed and marketed like this.

The danger, from EA's perspective is of suffering the death of a thousand cuts, ans they lose business to a thousand small developers, each delivering fun games with modest production values, but for a modest price and without the DRM atrocities lately so beloved of the big players.

What's going to be really interesting will to see how EA try and respond to the challenge. Patents, legislation, or close their eyes and hope the problem goes away?

Re:Indie Gaming

[Jafafa Hots]

Tangentially, you were talking about copyright, as the issues of copyright and DRM are all intertwined. Without the strange idea in EAs head that a string of 1s and 0s on my hard drive can be their personal property, they wouldn't have a motivation to use DRM, and there would be no notion of "piracy."

Your post about a business model that works (or doesn't) was a post about a business model that requires the artificial construct of "intellectual property."

Re:Indie Gaming

[adamofgreyskull]

The tone of your post is a little condescending. World Of Goo originally sold for $20 a pop on it's own. Available on Steam etc. 2dboy were probably making more than "beer money" before they had even their first pay-what-you-want sale. So I'm not sure they needed a gimmick. That $1 million you're talking about was just made in a week. 2dboy got $145k from that, split between just the 2 of them presumably. $70k is not such a bad annual salary where I'm from, but maybe it's just beer money in San Francisco. I'd also bought the Penumbra trilogy before this sale, and judging by the number of people who regularly sing it's praises on Slashdot, I don't think they were living hand-to-mouth before this either. Maybe they weren't pulling in "EA money", but nor do they have EA's overheads.

Secondly, I don't think it's necessarily any more gimmicky than say, Valve, having a weekend price-reduction to boost sales. All these games have been out for a while...how often do you see older video games on sale for $5-$10 at the local EB/Gamestop? This is exactly the same, except they're relying on people's honesty to pay what they feel is appropriate. You'll always get the people paying $0.01, just like you'd have people shop-lifting the game from a store, but you'll also have people thinking that it's worth more. The benefit of this is that a)no-one would offer to pay $20 for a game marked down to $10 at Gamestop, but they might in this case and b)if someone genuinely thinks $10 is too much for a game, but they'd pay $7.50, wouldn't you rather have the $7.50 than nothing?

Long and rambling, sorry. But my point is, as far as I can see it's a perfectly valid way to boost sales for an indie developer. It doesn't invalidate the traditional approach, but nor do I think it deserves condescension. You're right of course, it would never work for EA or World of Warfare: Modern Lich-King. Part of the reason "pay-what-you-want" works is that they are indie developers and I don't think many people would like the idea of screwing over a person by paying $0.01 for a great game like World of Goo, at least I'd hope not. Would people have the same crisis of conscience if they were screwing over a massive corporate entity like EA? Sad, but that's the way the world works. And of course, EA needs to know that it can pay all it's hundreds/thousands of employees, it would never take a gamble on human kindness like this because it couldn't afford to.

Re:Indie Gaming

[u-235-sentinel]

It also demonstrated that the Linux users were willing to shell out double compared to Windows users for quality games.

Scarcity means higher prices, perhaps? There aren't that many Linux games to begin with.

Higher price? You can pay a penny for all 6 games if you like. It's your choice.

Besides I've played world of goo the game (bought it weeks ago). And I've seen the other games. They are pretty decent :D

Re:Indie Gaming

[drinkypoo]

It also demonstrated that the Linux users were willing to shell out double compared to Windows users for quality games.

Well, I've now downloaded and played all the games in the humble indie bundle, and I want to know where the quality games are. The closest thing to a finished game in the whole collection is World of Goo, which has poor play control and makes the user wait unnecessarily. However, every other game in the bundle has worse play control and makes the player wait even more. Aquaria lets you skip cutscenes completely but has no hurry button. Gish looks like crap at any resolution and getting full resolution involves using a menu system that would have been outdated if it were contemporary to Quake and which doesn't actually preserve room or scroll the list of resolutions, resulting in text over text that's barely readable. It's like the developers of all of these games threw everything we learned about video game design in the last twenty years out the window because they think they know better.

Ten bucks is about the maximum I would pay to get World of Goo, and it's the only game in the collection that I think is worth one tenth of one shit (after I picked up the flashlight in penumbra, I could turn it on and off, but I couldn't do ANYTHING else... amateur hour has arrived!) so I don't feel like I was robbed. But if I buy another bundle like this, I'm paying a penny, and then if I like it, I can go back and pay more later. That way, I can at least reward the developer(s?) that deserve[s] it.

And yes, I bought it and they run great under Ubuntu 10.04 :D

Did gish64 work for you? I just got a window with some corrupted graphics and pointer in it. As well, the lack of installation instructions must be confusing for neophytes. And you can't simply double-click installers once downloaded, which is no problem for me, but which also must be confusing for newbies.

Re:Indie Gaming

[enderjsv]

Again, who said anything about DRM or copyright? My exact quote was "While I agree the current business model of larger games companies is outdated, I'm not sure this is the solution." That right there would highly suggest I'm not really a huge fan of the current DRM-filled business model, and indeed I'm not. I would like to see companies currently reliant on DRM to maintain their outdated business models explore more options, maybe looking more towards advertising or episodic content releases to mitigate the need for DRM.

But again, that's all a tangent that has nothing to do with my original post. Whether you like DRM or not, my only point is that this probably wouldn't work as an alternative to the current business model for big-budget games. That doesn't mean I'm defending DRM.

Please stop trying to turn this conversation into a tirade against DRM. Don't we have enough of that here on slashdot? I'm bored of that conversation.

Re:Indie Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game"

Re:Indie Gaming

[dangitman]

This shows that the giving freedom to your customers can work. It is a momentous slap in the face to the big boys like EA and ilk.

Not really. It's a confluence of factors that make this kind of thing successful. There's the novelty factor - if you did this every week, I think people would lose interest quickly. Related to the novelty factor is the massive media coverage it's gotten from places like slashdot, and I've even heard it mentioned on podcasts and blogs that aren't even computer-related. Again, if it happened every week, it wouldn't get this publicity. The other odd thing about it is the titles being triple platform, and there just aren't very many titles that are in that category. There's also the charity aspect, people feel good about giving money if some/all of it goes to a good cause.

Above all, it simply proves that people like a sale. This is nothing new. The promise of discounted prices has inspired people to buy stuff they otherwise wouldn't buy since the dawn of retailing. People have even been crushed to death or trampled in Black Friday sales, the allure is so strong.

Good

[SoupGuru]

I don't think anyone else will be able to replicate it, though. I think you get the good press for being one of the first to try it and then it becomes old news when someone else tries.

Re:Good

[chill]

Considering this was already the SECOND time this has happened recently...

http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/10/28/030237/2D-Boy-Posts-Pay-What-You-Want-Final-Wrap-up

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

This one added the charity angle.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Indy games are super-starved for publicity and they are usually priced pretty cheaply anyway (see steam sales where most go for 5$ or less) so there's not a lot of risk of trying these kinds of things anyway even if it only garners a digg or reddit front page and no other press, its still worth it.

What might be risky for a popular bands new album which cost a couple million to produce isn't really risky for an indie game.

Re:Good

[Alarindris]

Yeah, It just goes to show the impact that advertising has.

The bundle gained great success immediately after being featured on sites such as Ars Technica and Slashdot for followup blog posts about game piracy and multi-platform gaming.

Whether it's indie games or music, it's all about advertising. People can say fuck the middleman all they want, but that middleman (large label) has the money/connections to promote and advertise so you can make some money.

Granted, if you're product is FANTASTIC it will go viral, but without the initial kick that advertising gets, you don't stand to make much money without a lot of footwork and effort.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well, that makes all the difference in the world then, doesn't it. Next time, it'll be "Yeah, well, the software is very different", and then it'll be "Yeah, but the in-game video sequences are why it only works this time."
I can't help but think that, their stuff is so good that it worked well, but your stuff is so mediocre that you need an iron fist inside Adam Smith's glove to sell it.

Re:Good

[Tom]

True, it was a big marketing stunt.

But it was more than just that. It was cross-platform, which won them a lot of hearts from the Linux and Mac people. It's indie developers, which a lot of us feel closer to and more readily give them our money. It was DRM-free, which is one more reason to actually buy it. And it was a "choose your price", which takes away one of the most typical last-minute-resistance issues "hm, I kinda like it, but it's too expensive".

All in all, it was a good deal, absolutely. And even though I already owned World of Good, I gave them something well above their reported averages. And you know what? I made a copy for my girlfriend because I figured that we could just the same have bought it twice for half the money each, so what's the problem? And with the "no DRM" approach, I could. And I'm pretty sure they don't mind. And that's how the software business ought to work.

We all say "vote with your wallet" all the time. Apparently, a lot of us did.

Re:Good

[Jedi Alec]

And even though I already owned World of Good, I gave them something well above their reported averages.

Same here.

made a copy for my girlfriend because I figured that we could just the same have bought it twice for half the money each, so what's the problem?

I actually got her a bundle as well. When I last spoke to her she was installing World of Goo, I haven't heard from her since :P

We all say "vote with your wallet" all the time. Apparently, a lot of us did.

Indeedy. And the fact that my cash ends up with a bunch of indie developers, the EFF and Child's Play instead of in the bonus of some Ubisoft C*O makes me feel...all warm and tingly now. Besides, Aquaria kicks Settlers' ass anyway.

Re:Good

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Whether it's indie games or music, it's all about advertising. People can say fuck the middleman all they want, but that middleman (large label) has the money/connections to promote and advertise so you can make some money.

Now, if only the middlemen would accept their role as facilitators instead of trying to be owners.
They need to realize that their customers are not consumers, but the creators.
Then they can start marketing their services appropriately and get out of the copyright game.

Re:Good

[c0d3g33k]

World of Good

Now that's a game I wouldn't mind playing. To hell with all the "we have the most realistic blood spatter" or "the most awesome beat-down" or "we have teh h00k3rz" games. This is what I want. (And I don't mean 'Ned Flanders' world either - I'm atheist. But more and better graphic violence doesn't do it for me. )

Re:Good

[zach_the_lizard]

In the days of yore, where we still had to have physical media, it was much harder to survive without a record label. They had the cash, not only to produce your albums and advertise, but to get the media manufactured. With the rise online sales, you no longer need the middleman to get your records pressed; the cost to host an album is very low per customer. The middleman is starting to be cut out, and if he doesn't reinvent himself, he will fail. Personally, I think the way forward will see the artists keep copyright but share revenue with music stores in exchange for the publicity and bandwidth.

Re:Good

[Jake Griffin]

A couple million?

Re:Good

[Jake Griffin]

I actually got her a bundle as well.

What are you doing buying Tom's girlfriend video games? Does he know about this?

Re:Good

[Yvanhoe]

It shows it is possible. It shows reputation is the real money. I believe such a yearly/bi-yearly event could be held.

Re:Good

[hedwards]

To an extent you're right this isn't something that can be counted on in the long term. However, things like this do attract the attention of smaller developers. Knowing that there's that much interest in commercial software makes them more interested in porting software or making ways of using their software legally on other OSes more appealing.

Remember there was a time when MS and EA would've jumped at the chance to get 1m in sales. And I'm sure there's an up and coming company out there that's in a similar position right now.

Re:Good

[robi2106]

except I allocated 100% to the developers because I wanted to reward them for their work. I'll give to CP/EFF if and when I want to via some other mechanism.

Re:Good

[Prairiewest]

We all say "vote with your wallet" all the time. Apparently, a lot of us did.

Yep, I paid $20 just now, so that I could hopefully raise the average price if only just a tiny little amount, and also wanted to count my vote in the stats under "Mac"!! I probably won't play any of the games myself, but I'm sure my kids would love to get into World of Goo.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a Jedi, he can do stuff like that.

Re:Good

[oji-sama]

I allocated some of the money to the developers because I wanted to reward them for their work. Personally having EFF bundled in the offer helped my decision. I think the concept is awesome. Make a donation and select how much money goes to where.

Now would be a great time for these organizations to get together and create a webpage for donations. I assume that a lot of people are lazy rather than cheap (and would find customizing the donation interesting as well).

Re:Good

[Jedi Alec]

*waves hand*

This is not the misunderstanding you're looking for*

Re:Good

[nlayer]

Agreed. I paid $60 for the bundle. The way I see it, I took a few of the developers out for a beer, bought lunch for an EFF lawyer, and helped put a video game in the hands of a hospitalized child. In return, They gave me a collection of interesting games, no DRM, cross platform, and even the (promise of) source code. That's all win in my book. Any nay-sayers are missing the point completely.

Re:Good

[Jake Griffin]

I'm going to go home and rethink my life.

And even more platforms can benefit!

[NiteMair]

I'm ecstatic that they're going to open the source!

Having just experienced the Alpha 2 release of Haiku, I'd love to see a few of these games ported to that platform as well.

Now I'm glad I bought the Humble Indie Bundle, even though I haven't had time to play any of the games yet ;)

Re:And even more platforms can benefit!

[xeoron]

I am happy I did too, though I wish I had more to give them.

Re:And even more platforms can benefit!

[Anonymous Coward]

moderated already, so ac.

i haven't had the time to play games for quite some time now, and i did not know much about this offer - but after reading about opnsourcing in this article i opened their page, and i plan to purchase the bundle in the next few days (if the offer is indeed extended)

Aquaria also OSS

[hansamurai]

Along with Gish, Penumbra Overture, and Lugaru, Aquaria is also being open sourced. Lugaru's game engine was GPL'd but they're retaining the art assets, so I'm assuming the others will follow suit.

Great week for indie devs, charities, and gamers all around.

Re:Aquaria also OSS

[gringer]

Lugaru's game engine was GPL'd but they're retaining the art assets, so I'm assuming the others will follow suit.

The blog post about open sourcing Lugaru differs in that interpretation of their actions:

The game assets are included in the snapshot, and can be redistributed for free, but cannot be resold without our permission.

That means the assets aren't (or shouldn't be) distributed under GPL (because GPL permits commercial distribution), but it sounds like something similar to a creative commons attribution, non-commercial, sharealike license.

Re:Aquaria also OSS

[fat_mike]

I'll be interested to see how much they get to keep after Billy Corgan finds out they used the name of one of his albums.

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see what open source community can do with Lugaru and other games!

That's pretty cool

[enderjsv]

That's pretty cool. I'm happy for the developers.

Still, you have to admit the cost of developing these games was probably pretty small (full disclosure, I'm not familiar with all of them). While this business model could (and obviously does) work for cheaper-to-develop games like these, I really couldn't see it working for more expensive endeavors.

Good news for smaller developers, though.

Re:That's pretty cool

[xeoron]

I found this a major buying point: once you paid, you could download any or all version of the games for Linux, Mac OS, and MS Windows. I grabbed all versions for my different systems, so now I just need to get the saved game data synced across platforms once I start playing them during some down time.

The stats

[butalearner]

They offer the following breakdown:

Developers: $134k each

Childsplay: $154k

EFF: $148k

Pretty amazing for seven days. I admit I kicked in a little extra once I heard they'd go open source if they hit $1M. Note that the open source bit doesn't mean free as in free beer: Lugaru for example is including enough assets in the release that the demo will build, but the assets are still proprietary. As another reward for breaking $1M they also extended the promotion another 7 days.

Re:The stats

[hansamurai]

The counter has been fixed to a four day extension, they mentioned that was what they intended on IRC.

Re:The stats

[stoolpigeon]

Nice - this was my first monetary contribution to child's play and the eff. I kicked in more than average apparently, but I did so purely because of the charity angle, otherwise what I initially wanted to pay was much closer to the average.

Re:The stats

[Sycraft-fu]

Well in the case of Lugaru at least, if anything is interesting, it would be the source code. I don't know if you've looked at the game but it's assets are horrible. It is exceedingly low quality an amateurish in terms of graphics. However, that doesn't mean that the engine might not be interesting.

Re:The stats

[Tofystedeth]

That's pretty interesting. I guess it means a lot of people went with the default split? If you used the customized split it defaulted to split evenly 3 ways between Child's Play, the EFF, and the 5 devs, but that looks like a pretty even 7 way split.

Re:The stats

[rm999]

Well, as they say, "the coding style is what you might expect from a self-taught high school student, so it could be a challenge to understand, but feel free to give it a shot!"

This 12,000 line file really does remind me of something I would have written in high school (http://hg.icculus.org/icculus/lugaru/file/0b8beb014a87/Source/GameTick.cpp).

Anyway, kudos to the developer for open sourcing it!

Re:The stats

[OjM]

And the maker of that game has now an awesome team, which is making a spiritual sequel, Overgrowth. It's got both graphics and gameplay that makes some "top" games be ashamed.

Re:The stats

[h4rr4r]

So where can we see the assets you made that are so wonderful?

Re:The stats

[wrook]

I'm glad you mentioned this. I don't really want the games, but I *do* want the source released. As a way of encouraging this behaviour I will go give them money and not download anything. I wonder if this makes me a reverse pirate... Oh the implications for global warming...

Re:The stats

[Anonymous Coward]

The combat system was way better than I expected, it is actually a pretty tough game... I hate those fucking wolves though.

Re:The stats

[Sycraft-fu]

So you can only criticize that which you yourself are good at? Ok got it. In that case I never want to hear you criticize any government official, ever, unless you are also a government official who does the same kind of job, but does it better. No opposing the Iraq war strategy unless you have commanded a major war successfully. No complaining about any food your receive, unless you can also cook the same dish but better. No bitching about bugs in programs unless you have written the same program bug free.

See how stupid that attitude is?

People are perfectly capable of critiquing things they use, but do not create and indeed, our society depends on it. A comment like yours is just a juvenile way to try and shut down dissent. "You can't criticize this unless you can do better!"

Penumbra

[Pojut]

Penumbra is pants-wetting scary. Seriously, if you don't play any other game offered in this bundle, check it out. It ranks up there with Dead Space, Clock Tower, Undying, Fatal Frame, and the other big boys.

In fact, if the circumstances and your attitude are right, I daresay it challenges the crown for scariest game series.

Re:Penumbra

[dunezone]

Penumbra is just awesome. Walking around dark corridors with little eyes looking at you from the distant dark and once that happens its already too late.

Re:Penumbra

[wisnoskij]

I have played Dead Space (the beginning anyways), and it is not even comparable.

Penumbra is so scary my heart was racing while I played parts of it.
It was by far the scariest experience of my life.

Re:Penumbra

[Chris Burke]

Penumbra is pants-wetting scary.

I don't understand.

I've seen little kids pee their pants pretty often, and never once have I been scared.

Re:Penumbra

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I posted another thread praising Penumbra at the same time :0

I'll just have to add that it's not a play-for-5min arcade game of fun - it's more like a book that you can't stop reading because you want to find out what happens next / how it ends.

Re:Penumbra

[drinkypoo]

I've seen little kids pee their pants pretty often, and never once have I been scared.

I guess they weren't in your car, then.

I need another game on this laptop... hmm, lugaru's small. This really was a stroke of genius, I don't know if I've ever even heard of this game, now I've bought it, for however trivial an amount.

Re:Penumbra

[Pojut]

I have played Dead Space (the beginning anyways), and it is not even comparable.

While I agree that Penumbra surpasses Dead Space's scare factor, you really should try going through the whole game. There are parts of Dead Space where I literally had to turn the game off.

Dead Space + 42" flatscreen + mid-range surround sound = change of underwear. ESPECIALLY the portions where you have to solve (simple) puzzles while shit that you can't kill is never more than five seconds away from you.

Re:Penumbra

[SharpFang]

And remember, Penumbra in the game comes with a coupon code reducing the price of the 3-part Penumbra bundle on the developer's site from $20 to $5. So $5 for both sequels.

Re:Penumbra

[tlhIngan]

And according to the FAQ, Frictional Games is offering the rest of the Penumbra series to Humble Bundle purchases for $5...

Which means another 2 more games for $5.

Re:Penumbra

[GodfatherofSoul]

Amen to that, brudda. Dead Space took me a long time to finish because I had to keep taking "scared poopless" breaks.

Re:Penumbra

[Anonymous Coward]

>> It was by far the scariest experience of my life.

Dude. No offense, but if this is the case, a life is something you need more of.

Re:Penumbra

[apoc.famine]

I got it when they were selling the 3 games (2.5 really - the last is just a "we promised a trilogy, so here's some extra since we cleaned up the story in game 2) for $10. I'd toss down $30-$40 for the three games, no problem. I'm stingy on games, but the Penumbra series was awesome. First-person horror-puzzlers.

It wasn't the most awesome engine, the graphics weren't fantastic, but it was a solid, god damn creepy game.

Waking up after a horrific nightmare of an experience, somewhere you'd been before, and having to figure out what had been moved in the room, and put it back into its place, while knowing that you were in some twisted nightmare, and realizing that you had to, even though you didn't know what would happen after....Writing on the walls that only shows up when the light is off, twisted scrawls from a soul tormented by demons, but you HAVE to read it, in order to survive...if you can call it surviving...The eyes in the dark, the....things....that chase you..

Penumbra was a fantastic series. It was a mix of a horror-version of Deus Ex, where instead of playing a beefed up cyber-soldier, you were playing a 20-something, out-of-shape guy who was losing his mind with some Indiana Jones-esque archeology, and ancient ruins, with a quick dusting of 'I played the Marine in AVP' style terror.

Buy it, if you don't have it already. Worth 2-5x the $5-$10 they charge for it.

Re:Penumbra

[hedwards]

And if you pre-order now you can get Amnesia: The Dark Descent for half off. Which will come with bonus content since they've sold 2000 pre-orders. I have to say that this was rather wicked marketing. They get me for $50 on the collection then an additional $15 worth of games.

Re:Penumbra

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted to love Penumbra, it had the story and atmosphere to rival the early Silent Hill games, but I found the control system far too frustrating.

Re:Penumbra

[aiht]

Yeah, you should go out and REALLY get chased by things that are trying to kill you.
You just aren't living, if you aren't being nearly killed by monsters.

Re:Penumbra

[mcvos]

Dude. No offense, but if this is the case, a life is something you need more of.

Getting a mortgage for a quarter of a million was probably the scariest thing in my life.

Not really

[Yvan256]

Total contributed: 1 030 826$USD
Number of contributions: 113 871
Average contribution: 9.05$USD

Think what you want, but I'm pretty sure EA wouldn't bother with the 9.00$USD price tag or a customer base of only 115k players. They probably spend much more than 1 million on advertising alone for a single game.

What it does show is that the average target price for a game seems to be 1.80$USD.

Re:Not really

[butalearner]

I'm pretty sure these stats are skewed low: I saw one person claim to have purchased thirty bundles at a penny apiece to send to his friends after purchasing his own. Also, I know I can't be the only one who contributed extra once I found out about the pledge to open source when it hit $1M.

Re:Not really

[Intron]

What it does show is that the average target price for a game seems to be 1.80$USD.

I don't think people think that way - dividing the total by the number of games. I think that they averaged spending $9 and some would have done it for one game or three games. The fact that there were five in the bundle just meant that more people were willing to participate.

Re:Not really

[Yvan256]

But the way I calculated is how EA will calculate it, and we both know they're looking at this indie-bundle-event.

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I paid $10 because that's what I was willing to pay for one of the games (the only game I knew anything about). The rest of the games I'll see if they're any good. IF they are, sweet, if not, well, I bought it for only one game anyway, so who cares.

Re:Not really

[apoc.famine]

I'd be pretty happy if my friend and I made a couple of games, and sold them to 115k people for $9 each.

Is this in "EA screw-ya" territory? Nope. But it's not bad for shops of 1-5 people.

Re:Not really

[robi2106]

I paid $10 because that is what I paid for Fantastic Contraption, and it was an easy price point above the average (so I could feel smug) but not too much (because I still had to save the remaining $40 in my monthly "fun" budget for my RunesOfMagic addiction).

Re:Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

I paid 50% more than many of the cheap bastards out there: $0.02

Re:Not really

[mcvos]

I paid 50% more than many of the cheap bastards out there: $0.02

Yeah! All those cheap bastards who are only willing to pay $0.0033 over the minimum price!

Re:Not really

[kalirion]

I bought the bundle when I already owned (well, rented from Steam) 3 of the 5 games included. I'm sure there are others who made similar decisions.

Re:Not really

[OjM]

You do realize you just cost paypal some cents, and developers didn't see either of those cents. Payment should be like, over 0,3$ to developer to actually get anything.

How does this compare to DEVELOPMENT COST?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone seems to ignore this. Yes, EA won't care about $1M but that's because their games cost an order of magnitude more than that to make, unlike indie games. Can someone try to estimate the ROI on this bundle?..

David Rosen is shady

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really raising eyebrows for us long-time Lugaru fans. Shortly after Lugaru's release, David Rosen told us that there would be a slight delay on the mod tools. Months later he said that he had lost the entire Lugaru source-code shortly after launch, so the mod tools would have to be cancelled.

Needless to say, it was pretty surprising to hear that a game whose source supposedly didn't exist was being released as open-source.

Re:David Rosen is shady

[Pojut]

:( That sucks, dude. Here, this is just for you.

Re:David Rosen is shady

[carp3_noct3m]

"long-time Lugaru fans" and "shortly after launch" It seems your time frame is messed up. A quick google shows Lugaru was released in 2005. Its 2010, that seems like plenty of time to have found or made the source code =)

Re:David Rosen is shady

[OjM]

Are you for real? :O Some fans recreated the mod tools already. Also they never said they had lost the source code of the GAME which they released. Only the asset tools.

Penumbra rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought Penumbra Overture (and its sequel, Black Plague) a while back on Steam and I just have to plug them here in case you've missed them and since they're so awesome. They're basically 1st person horror adventures. The protagonist ends up stuck in a mine in Greenland and has to explore it in order to get out while unraveling the mystery of what's happened there. The games are very atmospheric and have an interesting, unfolding storyline with supernatural elements (Black Plague takes off where Overture ends). Reminds me of X-Files episodes where Mulder and Scully get stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere where strange things are happening, except the Penumbra protagonist doesn't have a partner. You should play them alone at night or when it's dark for maximum effect (it's not a pitch-black-surprise-monster-attack-in-your-face a la Doom 3 game). Overture has little combat; Black Plague has none.

The games are about as long as Half-Life 2 Episode 2, and IMO way better. Too bad they were underrated/overlooked by the gaming press. The third Penumbra game, Requiem, is a puzzle game without a storyline unlike the first two. I haven't bothered finishing it yet.

Huzzah!

[Zaphod The 42nd]

DRM free games are selling, and now as a result being open sourced?

I for one would just like to say, awesome.
I will totally be dling the src code.

Fees?

[alexandre]

Great job!

Would there be a better solution next time not to give out 50k$+ to credit cards, paypal and others?

Re:Fees?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, don't act like the credit card companies and Paypal didn't deserve the money. They did their freaking job. Do you honestly believe that the fundraiser would have gotten even half as much as it did, if it didn't take credit card or paypal payments? I know I sure wouldn't have donated anything if I had to send a check...and just imagine how much work it would have been to sort out who gets to download! All the data entry...

I hate to draw the comparison, but think of it like, well, taxes--except voluntary on the fundraiser's part, they didn't have to take those cards and stuff. You pay a little to make the rest of your life SO much easier.

Re:Fees?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG a 2-number UID? You are a creature of legends, a quasi-loch ness monster!

Re:Fees?

[alexandre]

I'm not saying they should remove the current options, but for example, isn't setting a normal credit card entering form going to cost more like 2% than 5% ?
Are there even better solutions to add to the mix which they could hint to to make people aware and get more for charity? :)

Re:Fees?

[muckracer]

> Would there be a better solution next time not to give out 50k$+ to credit cards, paypal and others?

Do they even take credit cards?

good publicity and great value

[modestgeek]

I ended up purchasing these games all for $50. I had never heard of any of them prior to seeing this on SD. I've only downloaded/installed and played a little bit of World of Goo and doubt I'll have much time to download and play any of the others. I was originally going to offer less knowing that I only would be able to play one but I felt cheap knowing that this was also a fundraiser.

No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1c.

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it comical that the Slashdot submission makes no mention at all that they also said 25% of downloaders were "pirating" it, and not paying even a single penny.
But that doesn't fit the Slashdot worldview, so it was left out.
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Saving-a-penny----pirating-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle

I chose $50

[bughunter]

My price was $50, and I think I'd be getting my money's worth at twice that. I put most into the developers and child's play columns, since I have already donated to EFF separately (and encourage you to, also).

There seem to be very few transactions these days that are a positive-sum. This is one of them.

Re:I chose $50

[Simetrical]

There seem to be very few transactions these days that are a positive-sum. This is one of them.

Any voluntary transaction between two parties with full knowledge (or close enough to full knowledge) is positive-sum. In particular, each party must be benefiting, because otherwise he wouldn't participate. You give money to a store owner in exchange for a product because you want the product more than the money, and he wants the money more than the product: you're both better off afterwards. This is why economic activity creates wealth, rather than just shifting it around.

Re:I chose $50

[Kjella]

Any voluntary transaction between two parties with full knowledge (or close enough to full knowledge) is positive-sum.

Of course positive sum may still mean you being royally screwed if the selection is poor like a local Internet monopoly, it just still happens to be a better choice than being completely without. It may simply be that the total sum of living there versus living somewhere else where means you let yourself be voluntarily ripped off.

Re:I chose $50

[Simetrical]

Of course positive sum may still mean you being royally screwed if the selection is poor like a local Internet monopoly, it just still happens to be a better choice than being completely without. It may simply be that the total sum of living there versus living somewhere else where means you let yourself be voluntarily ripped off.

Yep, definitely. It's also positive-sum to sell yourself into slavery, as long as the alternative is starving to death. (Well, assuming you prefer slavery to death.) Positive-sum doesn't mean "good".

Wow

[Locke2005]

The slashdot effect is being used as a force for good for a change, and it feels great to see that! I expect another surge in sales. I just kicked in $10 myself (which makes me a cheapskate compared to the average Linux user).

Re:Wow

[BikeHelmet]

I already own most of them, but I'll probably toss $10 in, weighted towards the EFF.

Aquaria is the one I still don't have.

Re:Wow

[L4t3r4lu5]

Indeed. Since I switched to Linux about two months ago, I've not bought a single game. I've either played WoW or installed old games which run on WINE. I've easily saved myself £100 a month. I may well give a decent chunk of that to these guys... 5 PC games would usually set me back £150.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[poetmatt]

maybe it 's because nobody cares.

as it was stated, a: some people can't even buy it (paypal isn't in every country), b: some people are too young to have credit cards, and c: some people find it easier than doing a paypal donation for 0$.

Add all 3 of those together and you have reasons to pirate.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[icebraining]

Which is *less* than games with heavy DRM (according to those companies like EA et all). So it does support the world view: DRM hurts sales.

Is this included

[SnarfQuest]

Is this money included in the "BSA Says Software Theft Exceeded $51B In 2009" story?

He he - top donations

[Anonymous Coward]

The second place top donation gave $1337.00

He he.

Cool...

[XxtraLarGe]

I'm glad I woke up when I did. I saw the story and went to the wolffire web site and threw in $10 split three ways (close to the average Mac contribution). I probably won't play any of these games, but I still think it's good to support indie developers, and I like the fact that they bundled it with charities as well.

That would be my bet

[Sycraft-fu]

They wanted to show how much they support games and how good their platform is and so on... Of course it really isn't all that impressive when you get down to it. Ok so Linux users contributed twice as much... It still ends up being peanuts in terms of money for games. I bought World of Goo when it came out for $20. Of that about 20% went to the digital distributor (Impulse). So the devs of that one title got about $16 from me, and I wasn't trying to make some point, I was just paying what I felt to be a very reasonable price for quality entertainment.

I'd be somewhat impressed if the Linux/Mac contributions were consistently higher than what you'd normally pay for a 5 pack of indy games, indicating that they truly were willing to kick in extra money as a donation to other entities or just as generally support for this kind of thing. However that's not the case. They paid on average only a couple bucks per title. To me, that is being a cheapskate, not showing your support.

I like customizations

[springbox]

Maybe now I can play Penumbra without being freaked out by the spiders. That's what I liked about the Thief games; the editor let you delete the definitions for the spider objects.

Re:I like customizations

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on!

I'm afraid of the dark, so I'm going to edit the game with floodlights everywhere.
Come to think of it, I'm also claustrophobic, so I'll also change it so everything takes place on the surface.

I bought it for like $20.

[Anonymous Coward]

I want my sale to count for Ubuntu, not Linux. ..and I want .deb packages, not bin/run/sh/wtf/etc

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you just want something for free. If you're too cheap to afford a single penny, then I'd question your ability to afford a computer. Even a homeless person could scrounge up the bare minimum necessary to show at least a little respect to the developers.

Oh, I forgot - this is Slashdot, home of the Open Source zealots who believe that copyright only matters when it's protecting something covered under the GPL. Carry on...

Can work for music too...

[Beorytis]

About the pay-what-you-want approach for independent music: http://sivers.org/livecd

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[FuckingNickName]

Why should I respect the developers? Even if I respect them, why should I pay them money for the expression of their thoughts? If they don't want me to hear, they should keep silent.

I donated a small amount

[jlechem]

And I'm glad I did. Besides Goo (which was worth the price of admission) the rest of the games were lackluster at best. They were indie games but for stuff meant to run on lower end hardware I was pretty surprised by the hardware reqs for the games. I guess my old rig can't even do indie games at this point in time.

Re:I donated a small amount

[OjM]

Meh, my gaming machine will prolly not be able to run the Overgrowth, which will be after Lugaru. And no, they aren't lackluster, you just can't comprehend a nice battlesystem like Lugaru has. :) Their next game will inherit the cool things in Lugaru and it will look and feel better than most "top" games now.

Re:I donated a small amount

[Pteraspidomorphi]

"lackluster" is possibly the last adjective I'd choose to describe Aquaria.

Re:I donated a small amount

[swatkins]

All the games are fraeking awesome, award winners. Gish has brilliant physics it is addictive and challenging, perhaps the most fun for me. Aquaria is a beautiful adventure. Penumbra is widely regarded as the scariest game ever, and has the most realistic physics I have ever seen in a game. Lugaru is a great martial arts game. Perhaps if you didn't donate much, you deserve not to enjoy the games. I bought it for myself at an average price, and after playing the games for a while I got 4 copies for friends at a more generous price. I haven't seen any open source / Linux games that I like better than these games.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Luckyo]

No, you just want something for free. If you're too cheap to afford a single penny, then I'd question your ability to afford a computer. Even a homeless person could scrounge up the bare minimum necessary to show at least a little respect to the developers.

I've never used linux on a machine I own in my entire life, I'm about as far as it gets from an open source advocate, and I can tell you that TIME IT TAKES TO JUMP THROUGH HOOPS to get the payment done from many developed countries is equivalent to earning about twice to thrice the money if I used the same time to work.

And I'm not exaggerating. In some places, it's even harder. In some, it's impossible.
People don't care if developer gets paid, just like when you buy a used car, you don't care if ingenious engineers who designed it get paid. They care for VALUE the product represents to them vs cost.

In this case, making the payment can add a huge cost to the purchase. It has nothing to do with being cheap. It has everything to do with being human and wanting to survive. People who spend for ideological rather then practical reasons often find themselves in position where they can't do either very fast.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[EvanED]

I can tell you that TIME IT TAKES TO JUMP THROUGH HOOPS to get the payment done from many developed countries is equivalent to earning about twice to thrice the money if I used the same time to work. ... And I'm not exaggerating. In some places, it's even harder. In some, it's impossible.

Somehow I suspect "World of Goo" is at the top of anyone's list who would be in said circumstance.

Maybe there are a few people... but not anything more than a handful relative to the 25% figure.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[EvanED]

Which is *less* than games with heavy DRM (according to those companies like EA et all). So it does support the world view: DRM hurts sales.

Don't forget to add in any figures of people pirating the games on BitTorrent or through other avenues. Remember, that 1/4 figure is only those people who got it through their servers and didn't pay for it.

If you want accurate numbers, compare overall sales of each game to overall pirate numbers. That 25% isn't even close to a fair comparison.

Piracy works?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how much of that is due to the publicity gained from people leaking the direct download links.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people don't have paypal, google checkout, or amazon.com accounts.

nice to see this

[FoltynD]

it's great that people willing to pay for indie games small yet nice amount of money even if they could choose less...

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[atomic-penguin]

I disagree. I've read a few of the other blog posts from Wolfire that have been posted on Slashdot in the past. It seems to me, their views (Wolfire) are very much aligned with the majority view held on Slashdot. That is, that DRM is an ineffective combatant against piracy and that it only hurts legitimate customers.

If you read the link that you posted, more carefully, they point out that they are not taking action to stop piracy of their games. Their stance is that any kind of digital restriction imposed on their games could negatively affect a paying customer. He goes on to point out that the trade-off of hurting just one customer is a compromise they are not willing to make, just in order to combat the seemingly marginal effect of piracy on their sales.

If you check out some of the other blog posts on their website, they talk about how piracy is overstated and has a marginal effect on actual sales. In other words, piracy is not creating a loss in sales, because the pirate would never have been a paying customer in the first place. The motivation for piracy may vary from the inability to pay, compulsion to download, or even the challenge of cracking digital imposed restrictions. However, the average pirate may not be downloading software, music, or movies simply to use it. That is simply an ignorant point of view taken by the likes of the BSA, MPAA, and RIAA to justify overstated loss projections. What is more likely, and realistic, is that consumers get no value out of the respective products and sales have declined with value proportionately. It may be true that some consumers have turned to piracy for media they expect to consume, but the actual loss effects on the bottom line have very little to do with the majority of pirates.

So the question remains, how many paying customers do you have to piss off with digitally imposed restrictions before it has a real, and noticeable, effect on your bottom line?

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[hedwards]

Indeed and don't forget that the 25% likely include some people that weren't able to get in on the action legally. Either they didn't have a credit card or they live in a part of the world where they have no access to the payment processors. It would be interesting to know how many of those would've paid had they been able to send in a check or pay in some other fashion.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[sammyF70]

well .. I nearly submitted it, but then I remembered my last submission about the Humble Bundle being criticized for being slashvertisement. My guess is taht many felt the same way, and thought : "let's wait till the action is over. It might repel a few trolls". Besides, like others have been answering : the blog post is actually against DRM. Piracy kind of hurts, but they were ailing to increase the paying customer's convenience, not trying to (possibly under special circumstances if the moon is aligned correctly) make it more difficult for would be pirates.

Contribution stats...

[mathfeel]

This is from their realtime stat:
Win: $7.98
OS/X: $10.19
Linux: $14.5

So somehow people who actually pay for their OS are being the cheapos here?

Re:Contribution stats...

[PommeFritz]

What makes you think the Win users actually paid for their OS? If they spend $8 on average on a deal like this, I'm inclined to think many of them don't pay the price of a legal Windows install either... (then again, the other 2 amounts aren't particulary high too. It could be that many people just look at the deal and see 1 game they like, and base the amount of money on that? Even though you get a lot more. Personally, I decided to pay $50 for this deal.)

Not at all

[/dev/trash]

Windows can be pirated ya know. And the people paying 1 cent for a game are pirates.

Re:Not at all

[dmneoblade]

How, exactly, are they pirates? There was no minimum amount set. If I got a game on sale for $15 instead of the retail $60, does that make me a pirate? Last I checked, I still bought goods at a price they were willing to be sold at.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I pirated it.

Then mailed some cash to Child's Play.

If I can't use their payment schemes or mail it to them directly, I'll just cut out the middleman

Spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

These fuckers spammed me. I've never had any contact with them, unless you count previously buying 2 of the games (World of Goo and Gish) off of Steam as part of a bundle.

From: "Wolfire Games"

Hey guys, we have some big Wolfire news: our biggest promotion ever! Introducing the Humble Indie Bundle.

http://www.wolfire.com/humble

This is an awesome pay-what-you-want indie video game / charity promotion that we are trying out.

- Pay What You Want

Pay as little or as much as you want for a bundle of 5 classic indie games: World of Goo (IGF award winner), Aquaria (IGF grand prize), Gish (IGF grand prize), Lugaru HD and Penumbra Overture.

- Cross-Platform: PC, Mac and Linux

We didn't want to leave anyone out, so only games that support Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux were chosen.

- No DRM

No need for online key checks or other forms of DRM. All these games are 100% DRM free.

- No Corporate Middle Man

All proceeds (minus credit card fees) go directly to the developers and charities according to your chosen split!

- Buying the Bundle Helps Charity

By default Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation share an equal part of the bundle proceeds with the five games. However, you can customize it any way you choose.

The site is live! Please check it out

http://www.wolfire.com/humble

and please help us spread the word!

Thanks a lot!

Jeffrey Rosen
Wolfire Games

Seriously, fuck these assholes.

Re:Spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

Contact them and accuse them directly.
If the World of Goo or Gish people shared your email address, complain to them also.

Both spam and sharing email addresses are serious problems, no matter how good the cause is.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Kjella]

Well, that's a guesstimate based on number of IP addresses... if you download it from more than one IP your other downloads will count as a "pirate". Plus I suspect that if you tell people they can choose how much to pay, many want to play first and decide afterwards. Like the blog says "25% seems incredible given that you can simply pay $0.01 to be completely legitimate." so why not play first and decide if it deserves a little more. Or maybe nobody at the link site even told them anything about the offer. Does it matter? It just proves that some people really don't want to pay anything, period. I doubt you could have earned anything on them anyway.

Damn

[OrwellianLurker]

I would have thrown a couple of bucks their way if I would have heard about this.

Re:Damn

[Anonymous Coward]

well .. you still can

Re:Damn

[OrwellianLurker]

Thanks AC. I didn't catch that. I'll have to check and see if I can get them running on Fedora or if I'll have to boot into another OS.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[interkin3tic]

But that doesn't fit the Slashdot worldview, so it was left out

Only if we're being extremely stupid about it. We don't deny there are parasitic gamers out there who would take advantage of lack of DRM to get something for nothing.

The analysis in the link you provided was dead on, with various reasons why some of that 25% wasn't actual piracy, but may have been multiple downloads, etc...

Anyway, it also demonstrates that some people are just not going to pay for games: they had the option to pay a cent, and they did not. I think that erodes the videogame industry's claim that every download is lost profits: they were never going to see that money. Furthermore, these guys spent -zero- dollars on DRM and only got 25% piracy. Those companies spending big bucks on DRM and still seeing comparable piracy rates have got to be wondering if their DRM schemes aren't a complete waste of money.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Draek]

You're vastly underestimating the effort it takes to pay through one of these things. I was once a very happy Magnatune customer, until they had problems with their CC company and, as such, accepted only Paypal. Between the horror stories I heard about it and all the hassles I had trying to register due to my country of origin, I ended up switching to Jamendo instead and started being a cheap-ass.

I was similarly gonna pass on this deal because of Paypal until I saw it also supported Google Checkout and decided to give it a try. Fortunately it worked fairly easily for me, but for anybody that doesn't (due to their country, privacy preferences or whatever) I'm willing to understand if they decide to skip the whole ordeal instead, download it off BitTorrent and, hopefully, donate some money through other means.

Plus in my book paying less than a dollar (and *particularly* a single penny) for these games is even worse than outright piracy, at least in the latter case you aren't wasting the devs' bandwidth, only your own.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[OjM]

Ahem, Wolfire and others actually made the games, they are not the middleman. :D Child's Play is just collecting.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[idlemachine]

Really? These days it seems more home to astroturfing IP-loving douchebags like yourself.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is *less* than games with heavy DRM (according to those companies like EA et all). So it does support the world view: DRM hurts sales.

No, you can't make that comparison. The 25% figure was a lower bound, calculated from conservative figures. It could be a lot higher.

World of Goo was drm free and pirated at 90%

[judeancodersfront]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90.ars

People pirate because they don't want to pay. It's really that simple.

DRM is pointless in some cases and works very well in others like the PS3. Yes this doesn't conform to the Slashdot view but then the Slashdot view is partially based on wishful thinking.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[bnenning]

I find it comical that the Slashdot submission makes no mention at all that they also said 25% of downloaders were "pirating" it, and not paying even a single penny.

Typical game piracy rates are far above 25%, so if you're not a troll I'm not sure what your point is.

So pirated copy != lost sale?

[Anonymous Coward]

By that logic, the music, video and video game industry have lost BILLIONS of dollars from pirated movies and songs between Napster, Kazaa, Bittorrent, newsgroups, FTP servers and direct download sites like Megavideo/Upload, Rapidshare and Mediafire.

And no, I'm not exaggerating when I say "billions of dollars". In 2009, the video game industry alone had over 20 million pirated downloads, thats a billion dollars right there.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Anonymous Coward]

"Which is *less* than games with heavy DRM"

To be fair, the 25% number is based on piracy purely from *their servers*. It does not count piracy over BitTorrent.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pay via paypal with a credit card without an account.

I bit

[QA]

Glad I read /. today. I paid $10.00 and will head over to purchase the other 2 installments of Penumbra strictly based on what I've seen here.

I only have 2 desktops at home running Ubuntu 10.4, but sooner or later I'll get the rest off Windows. Might even be brave enough to try it on my laptop, but the SLI is worrying me.

By the way, to those people trying to justify a penny? Go away. Thats an insult no matter how you try and gussie it up, akin to leaving a waitress a penny for shitty service.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Anonymous Coward]

From your link:
"So we can divide the 49.3 TB by 490.01 MB and we get 105,497 average downloaders.
Assuming these numbers are reasonable, we get 79,000 / 105,497 = 0.749 are estimated to be legitimate or about 25% have pirated the bundle -- directly from us."

Euhm, so everyone that downloads more than the average downloader is a pirate?

Say I bought the bundle, but own multiple PCs that are not interconnected. Or a Work pc I've got full access to.

How about I download it on my desktop at home, download it on my netbook and download it on my work laptop?

Yes, I could easily transfer it by USB stick, but seriously, it's 750MB... That's a flash to download for most people, so why bother?

And now, I'd have downloaded 3 times the total size of the bundle, yet I've not pirated ANYTHING.

I think it's safe to say that the pirate estimation is pure bullshit... It's based on flawed assumptions and no other data.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Anonymous Coward]

agreed. the slashdot hippie bullshit mindview contends that pirates are freedom fighetrs rebelling against evil corps and their evil DRM.
Turns out they are just selfish scumbags.
Who would ahve thought it eh?

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[muckracer]

> If you're too cheap to afford a single penny, then I'd question your ability to afford a computer.

As mentioned...the penny is not in question. It's the transfer of said penny, that makes things difficult if not impossible for some who do want to pay.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[muckracer]

> > A lot of people don't have paypal, google checkout, or amazon.com accounts.

> You can pay via paypal with a credit card without an account.

Actually this just goes to show, that all of the currently existing Internet/remote payment options are severely lacking in convenience and efficiency. What I'd like to see make a return is the thought of eCash which is basically your own money in digital form. Without middlemen skimming off each time you use your own money. That'd enable micro-payments ("Click here to buy this game/song for a penny!" ... one-click, of course) and while the individual purchase amount would be much less, I believe, the overall sum of purchases would be at least as high as today, if not higher. Does it really bother me to buy 100 songs for a buck? No. Just make it easy and convenient.

Nice

[RichiH]

I even paid twice (I pre-ordered WoG the second they promised to suppot Linux, at some point) and I am glad that I did.

Unfortunately, the only game I would really be interested in as FLOSS is WoG which is not opening up (yet?). Maybe that's due to them being on WiiWare and some regulations. Dunno.

Another question to which I see no immediate answer is if the others are opening the _source_ or _the whole game_ including artwork, sounds, etc.

Re:Nice

[IBBoard]

Lugaru is going for GPL code and closed graphics/other assets. Not quite sure what the others are doing yet. Also, World of Goo has some of its source code publicly available, although I'm not sure if that is just the engine and how much of the game that includes.

Re:Nice

[RichiH]

Seems like they are all going for code-only. A pity, but understandable, I guess.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Kleppy]

So I paid $5 and made up for the other 499 assholes.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Anonymous Coward]

no it doesnt. the data was based on the bandwidth the pirates leeched from indie devs trying to raise money for charity.
Dont try and make excuses for those scumbags

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of those are teenagers that don't have credit cards?

Kids in Belgium don't have the means to buy games online because of the limited payment options.

Re-bought and it's worth it

[Aeternax]

I had previously bought Aquaria directly from bit-blot and it's one of the best games I've played in many years. Now I chipped in again despite having played it already just to support them. World of Goo and Penumbra are also great games in their own right. Also a nice bonus was being able to buy the Penumbra Collection for $5 if you did buy the Humble Indie Pack. That makes this pack a truly awesome deal and seemingly; much overlooked.

Win-Win

[DarthVain]

I think the real story here is that indie producers don't have a lot of money for PR, whereas companies like EA spend more on PR than they do on creating actual product.

In one fell swoop, a conglomerate of indie producers took some old games that are still fun, but likely not really making any money for them, and A) Made some money, B) Gave to Charity, and C) Got tons of PR for doing so.

So I revise, Win-Win-Win.

The most important part by FAR is C). In that even serious gamers like myself have never heard of most of these game or indie producers. By allowing me this opportunity, I get good (yet older) games for cheap, give to charity (so we both feel good about ourselves), and get to try out games from these indie developers that I have never heard of before. If I like them, then maybe I will pay attention to what else they are producing and buy the new stuff when it comes out.

Who ever planned this should give themselves a great big pat on the back, and the rest of the indie groups should buy him a beer.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[2obvious4u]

What if you didn't have one of the payment plan accounts and pooled with people at the office to get the DRM free game and share it among your co-worker? Are you a pirate? You each paid $5 for the bundle, but only one person actually paid for it out of their paypal etc account.

PixelJunk and the PS3

[minstrelmike]

PixelJunk sells its downloadable games for $10 on the PS3.
It seems to be a strategy that works.
I get 6 of their games for the price of one new EA game.
If I wait, then the price of a used disc drops to $30 or $40 but it seems as if the big game companies want to close that market off, too. They cut their own throat.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[dangitman]

He was talking about PayPal being the middle-man, not the developers. Which is a fair point, PayPal takes an outrageous percentage of the payments, and many people don't like to deal with them because of their questionable ethics.

Mini reviews

[mcvos]

I guess this is as good a place as any to post my opinion of these games.

World of Goo is genius in every possible way. Wonderful gameplay, funny, looks cool. And after finishing a lot of levels, there's a ton more!

Aquaria looks absolutely gorgeous, great narration, and it's a wonderful experience just swimming through that ocean and watching all the colourful fish and other things float by. Apparently there's supposed to be a game in there, but I haven't found it yet. There's lots to explore, though.

Lugaru could very well be genius if it's your kind of game. I honestly wouldn't know.

Samorost 2 looks cute and funny and has a few nice puzzle, but there's not a lot of actual game in it. It's mostly moving your mouse cursor around, looking for stuff you can interact with (not a lot), and then experimenting with combinations or timing. Looks pretty, though.

I haven't tried Penumbra or Gish yet.

Re:Mini reviews

[drinkypoo]

I found the play control in Aquaria to be poop and the camera to be retarded. If I could see where I was swimming, maybe I could swim. If I could swim better, maybe I wouldn't have to see so far.

I was seriously pissed off at all the stuff I couldn't skip in World of Goo. It would be a great casual game if I didn't have to spend more time waiting than I do playing. This abuse of the player stops it from being an A-list title, in my book. I hated that shit in the 8bit era, too. And if there's more levels after you build a big enough tower or something, forget it. That's just more abuse. Give me the fucking levels, don't make me play your meta-game. Especially since it's so annoying with all the goo balls running around in my way where I want to pull a ball out of the tower.

Penumbra looked like it would be one of those games where you spend the whole time fighting the engine, but since it wouldn't let me do anything but turn the flashlight on and off or quit once I picked up the flashlight, I'll never know just how frustrating it would be.

Re:No mention that 25% pirated it and didn't pay 1

[poetmatt]

so the people who can't pay want something for free? It's not about capability to even scrounge cash.

What is your argument for those who are in countries that paypal does not serve?

Should they just not even pirate the game because surely these "hobos" can afford to pay a system that won't accept it?

Yes, you forgot, it's slashdot, where an anonymous comment will troll up a thread because someone RTFA.