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Third Humble Bundle Arrives, 'Frozenbyte' Edition
supersloshy writes "The team behind last December's successful Humble Indie Bundle 2 (as well as the original Bundle of course) have launched yet another bundle, but this time it's comprised entirely of games by developer Frozenbyte, including Trine, Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds: Survivor, a pre-order of Splot, and the prototype Jack Claw (with source code). All games (except Jack Claw) are, as always, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux-based operating systems and are DRM-free."
I got trine some time after it came out and felt it was an excellent game. The puzzles were neat, the game play was smoother than most triple-A games I own and it was a damn site more fun. Also I loved the visual feel of Trine, it was pretty, whilst retaining it's own charm. I would recommend this as a reason alone to get the bundle. Also I can't wait for Trine2, I love those sorts of physics puzzle games.
...this is a ripoff. Who the hell would buy a game without DRM? I mean, that's the main selling point! Buy this game, and as a special bonus, get your computer infected with bullshit for ABSOLUTELY FREE!
I'm annoyed that I apparently missed the second bundle. I guess I'm not on Slashdot enough!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I don't have the time to play the bigs games I want to play right now (Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age 2) and I still haven't played most of the games from the first two bundles. But I'm still buying this just on principle.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I really hope these come with steam codes, like the last bunch did. That was really nice for me to have them on my steam account instead of keeping the unique download codes for the bundle version.
I kid, I kid
Quite right. This is clearly an thinly veiled advertisement for a bundle of DRM free games of which one has the onus of setting one's own price down to the developer/distributor split as well as charitable contributions to organizations that bring joy to children or stand as champions of free speech online.
Hmm... put that way I think I could handle a few more "advertisements." Although, when I think about: successful social/business experiment, an embrace of DRM free media by the groups most likely to be harmed by piracy (indie devs), helping kids in a nerdy way, and crowd sourcing the legal protection of internet freedom - I think I'd call this "news" although possibly just of interest "for nerds," but definitely "stuff that matters" in my opinion.
Glad I heard the announcement.
These bundles raise money for Child's Play, they challenge the conventional release model, and they're DRM-free Linux games.
If that isn't "News For Nerds", then I don't know what is.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
For any company or even non-profit organization, unless they are already substantially developed, part of the goal is some level of growth. Break-even means there's not really a possibility for growth, and the organization will have a hard time getting better.
For the folks behind the HIB's, that might mean that with a bit more money, perhaps they can provide more technical support people (though they've done, from what I can tell, an awesome job with what they had, I also think they ended up all working 80+ hour weeks during the big events). It also might mean that, if they can make a bit of money, perhaps they can get developers of better titles to participate in the future, maybe a little more publicity to get even more people to hear about and particpate in the bundles, better servers, better website design, etc.
Now, there's a difference between a 'healthy' profit and a glutonous one, of course, but a little bit of profit really is necessary for any organization to thrive in the future, not just 'break-even'.
I think an earlier poster was correct and it's boiling down to supply and demand. There are so many games already available for windows.
I have both a windows and Linux machine at home and I'm willing to pay more for "decent" Linux games then for excellent windows games. After all the games are the only reason I've kept my windows box around this long. I haven't even bought anything new for it in over a year. If the bundle trend continues I guess I'll finally be free of that OS for good. Now if only Steam would get on board and develop a Linux port so I didn't have to run Steam through WINE.
Being their 3rd bundle, it doesn't really count as news.
But it definitely matters.
Launching a 3rd bundle is definitely news. It indicates they've had enough success that this model is effective and not just a guess that a it is effective.
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Well, there's also the server bandwidth and their time for maintaining things and promotional costs... Credit card transaction fees alone is probably a loss for them.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
I missed the previous two bundles, but I would still like to buy them. Does anyone know if they are still available? I purchased this one, and hoped there will be a link to older ones, but no.
And that the Linux people try to convince themselves that they aren't cheapskates, because they paid more than the Windows people as though that "proves" something.
When you get down to it, they are all pathetic amounts of money. $12 means, ignoring CC costs and other overhead, that you pay only $4/game. That is an almost insultingly low amount for quality software.
I think part of the reason the Windows numbers are so low, is that the non-cheapskate people already bought this stuff. I will not be buying this bundle, because I already own the games form it that I care to. However I didn't pay $4 for them. Trine I paid $15 for on sale, and it was worth the money.
I say that not to brag, I didn't pay it to prove a point, I paid it because that was the price they were asking at the time and I decided it was a reasonable price.
If the Linux people want to impress, they should at the very least match the Steam price for this. Currently Steam sells the Frozenbyte pack (which Frozenbyte sets the price for) for $30 and it does not include a Splot preorder. Realistically if they are trying to show the platform's viability/willingness to pay it should be more as a demonstration, and also because a cut is going to charity.
All these bundles ever show to me is:
1) There are a lot of cheapskates out there and if you let them set their own price, it'll be very low.
2) People aren't as altruistic as they think, they just compare themselves to others and try to do better then pat themselves on the back (as explained here: http://fora.tv/2009/11/10/SuperFreakonomics_Challenging_the_Way_We_Think).
Now I should say I've no problem if you wish to buy a game pack cheaply. Nothing wrong with that. However don't go and sprain your arm reaching over and patting yourself on the back so hard because you didn't buy it quite as cheaply as someone else.
The simple fact of the matter is many Windows users (and probably Mac users too) paid much more for a single one of these games because they decided it was worth it. That is really supporting the devs, not a token "Well we paid more than the other cheapskates!" thing.
Out of curiosity, why do you feel that PayPal, Amazon Payments and Google Checkout are all so evil, that putting $10 into them is unthinkable, even if it means supporting charities like Child's Play, the EFF, and Indie Developers porting their games to Linux and offering source code?
Full disclaimer, I work for PayPal.
I'll talk about PayPal, not having had much experience with AP (some) and GCO (none).
Let's start with the fee structures. I can almost understand transaction fees for credit card payments given they are passed on to Visa/MC (though I am sure PP does not pay anywhere near as high transaction fees that they charge others). However, for payments from PayPal balance, the fees are atrociously high for not a lot of benefit. This is untenable if you want micropayments, and is really f'n annoying for stuff that is not "micro". When I give the recipient money, I'd like them to receive almost all of it -- possibly commensurate to the actual fees Visa/MC extract with a tiny percentage and no per-transaction fee for PayPal. Right now you're fleecing on balance-payments.
Dispute Resolution -- it takes quite a while. It may have to. Over the years PP has improved on this a bit by opting to freeze specific transactions and not entire accounts -- though this is at the whim of whoever decides something is "suspicious".
Moreover, looking at it from the perspective of a seller, if you want to keep your account, you are pretty much pressured into acquiescing on any and all disputes. PayPal, while charging a LOT of money for their services, shifts the responsibility for fraud towards the recipients of any transaction. Considering it is an eBay company, this is rather an interesting choice -- if I sell something on eBay and the buyer complains about not receiving his item or receiving a degraded version thereof, there is nothing the seller can really do to disprove this -- in the case of physical goods there may or may not be a shipping slip (but let's get real here for a minute, for private transactions the cheaper shipping options do not always provide those) which PayPal may or may not accept -- if you go "digital", there is nothing you can show. If a seller receives a dispute notice on a transaction, they can write it off right then and there. No chance in hell PayPal will eat it. Notice how this also does not give PayPal any incentive to increase account security, fraud protection, etc. You can claim that PayPal "cares" about this regardless, but why should it ?
PayPal acts like a bank, holding a balance, freezing transactions, etc -- at the same time it does everything in its power not to be regulated like a real bank in most jurisdictions. If I go to a bank in Germany to do a transaction, there is regulatory oversight with teeth in these cases. PayPal ? Fat chance.
There have been enough cases of PP freezing recipient accounts entirely; they may state a reason, but that's not worth the email it was sent in. This seems to happen when an account suddenly gets a bunch of payments from many sources. Maybe this has changed and ONLY the "suspicious" transaction are frozen now, but given history, I would not bet on it. Specifically, I would not want to use PayPal for any purpose where there is a possibility of a decent influx of transactions. I can go down to my bank's main offices and resolve issues in a matter of hours, if not minutes, should they really arise. I cannot do so at PayPal, and it can take weeks for them, dragging their feet.
Unfortunately some of the directions PP is going in are the same directions other payment/cc networks and regulatory bodies are going; as such your suggestion to use cash wherever possible is one I try to follow where possible. Businesses actually often prefer it -- the marketing blurb goes that handling real money costs more money than handling credit card or debit card payments -- this may be true if that is all you accept, ever, but if you accept cash (and who doesn't), you have those costs either way and save on