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New Humble Bundle Is Windows Only, DRM Games
jbernardo writes "After all the indie, multi-platform (including 4 for android) and DRM free releases, the latest Humble Bundle release is a polarizing one. It features non-indie games, it is Windows only, and the games are saddled with DRM. There is already a very vocal discussion on the Humble Bundle Google+ thread, but it seems it is selling well."
I have a Windows computer, and value wise this may be the best bundle yet, but I feel it is against the spirit of the bundle and am not chipping in, if they don't do another one before xmas, my big donation one is going strait towards a charity.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/polemic
Do you know what polemic means?
Because the humble bundle finally has good games.
I'm +Eric Hopper over on Google+.
I'm angry for several reasons. But the biggest reason is that I gave the Humble Bundle brand name a lot of free advertising and word of mouth because I expected them to always be DRM-free and cross-platform. Them choosing not to be feels like a betrayal and a cheat because they're taking all that good will I helped them create to sell something that is at cross-purposes to the reason I helped them create this good will.
I'm also angry because I spent a bunch of money, always above the average, often significantly so. I spent it not just because I thought the games were worth it. I spent it because I believed in Humble Bundle and what I thought they were trying to accomplish. It was another way for me to invest in the brand.
If they had done something like this under a different name I wouldn't be angry at all. Create another brand "Pay What You Can" bundles or whatever and market your stuff under that brand if it doesn't fit the Humble Bundle image. Then I wouldn't feel like all the work and money I put into supporting the Humble Bundle brand was a waste.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
If you have an urge to walk down a crowded street and whack people with a giant purple penis, you're in luck -- Saints Row 3 is included.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
THQ has been struggling, so they're trying something new. That's a good thing. If you don't want to buy it, don't. I did, as did many of my friends, and I'm quite happy with it.
What the hell does this have to do with GOG?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Yep. I still bought it, but I paid the lowest amount I've ever paid for a Humble Bundle, and if sliders do what they're labeled, it's all going to charity.
I fail to see a problem here, if you have an issue with this just send everything to charity. Personally the way I view it is this way, the more money they raise for charity the better, it's to help the less fortunate after all. This time around it is for Child's Play and America Red Cross both respectable organizations which I would be proud to donate to.
So yes if you have a "Screw You" type of mentality towards DRM and refuse to give them money for it, go right ahead. You can still buy said games and just donate everything to charity and deny the company who produced said games money.
Yeah, that'll teach them to do exactly what pirates have been insisting major publishers should do! How dare they give us the option to pay what we want!? They must be punished!!
You're right, Arrogant Bundle is way catchy.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
This company is near bankrupt. We can all hate because we're from a subculture that supports individualism and new startups for games. However, this company is offering us games for basically CHARITY. Also, they're a company that needs these funds to continue on after doing bad in the market. Games like Saints Row and Company of Heroes are great games, DRM or no DRM, If you're really idealistic, you would be opposed to other humble bundles which they use Steam WHICH IS DRM. Grow up guys and support THQ for their work.
Time to change the name from Humble Bundle to Greedy Bundle.
Really? Did the price go up? Let me check... Nope, still pay what you want.
I'm guessing they got rid of the Child's Play donation... No, that's still there.
Must have stopped the EFF donation.... No, that seems to be there too.
I figured it out!
The people that buy the bundle are greedy, getting 6 games on Steam for as low as $1.
Must have stopped the EFF donation.... No, that seems to be there too.
Whoops, spoke too soon, the greedy bastards changed it to the American Red Cross. Those bastards, donating to charity like that.
It's fine with me. Best DRM ever.
Your loss, lol. The real problem is if there's ever a UPlay-exclusive Humble Bundle
$13.37 is more then I'm willing to spend on THQ games. Even if the money can go to charity. I have morals.
I am stupid. please ignore. at the time it looked like that was the lowest amount, but apparently you can do .01 if you want (but under $1.00 gets you the soundtracks).
I will say Metro 2033 was a fun game to play, but rest the games are just meh.
Be seeing you...
Where have I missed all the pirates clamoring for major publishers to find a prominent "indie" brand name to masquerade as, and attempt to sell their DRM wares via that channel?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I paid $6 dollars myself. This is actually the first Humble Bundle I've bought.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Pirates have been clamoring for publishers to adopt a pay-what-you-want model. THQ is trying that out as a temporary offering. It is entirely logical for them to use an existing site that specializes in pay-what-you-want temporary offers. If it works well, they might create their own platform. Expecting them to create their own platform for an experiment is absurd.
So let me see, dropped the EFF donation and added DRM. What is the message?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Yes and the Windows users also made up around 70-80% of the revenue in most of them.
Whole Foods has Oscar Mayer bologna on sale this week.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
$5.67 - if this keeps up, it will be one of their lowest 5 averages. Probably a ton of people are just paying the $1 minimum. Should have tried to include more platforms.
Yeah, that'll teach them to do exactly what pirates have been insisting major publishers should do! How dare they give us the option to pay what we want!? They must be punished!!
Yeah! They totally released these DRM free and cross platform so we should... wait a minute..
In all honesty, giving all to charity is a perfectly valid option to choose and THQ surely expects that some people may choose to do that.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Look, I get THQ are struggling for money. And to be honest the selection is extremely good quality for any price. But the Humble Bundle is synonymous with DRM-free and cross platform titles. It used to be only about indie titles, but some commercially published games like Psychonauts have starting slipping through and I'm OK with that, since it increases potential interest and they're still DRM-free and cross platform. But here? It's not DRM-free at all (Steam) and it's Windows only. Not something I associate with the "Humble" Bundles.
Having said that the bundle has been available for around 27 hours as the time of this post, and has reached nearly $1.6 million in that short space of time. This kinda reaffirms my belief that ultimately people (well, gamers anyway) don't care about DRM-free and cross platform benefits, so long as the games are cheap.
Dude...
The message is 1 > 0.
As in, some money still goes to charity, you still pay what you want. Even if the Red Cross isn't the best charity, Child's Play is, and $1 > $0.
Humble set up a system to let people get games cheap and help people in the process, what have you done to help the world this week?
(Hint, whining here about DRM counts as 0.)
Actually, no, they're not being punished; they're just not being rewarded. In fact, I rather like the idea suggested precisely because it shows a lot of "would-be pirates" actually would and do have money and would spend it to get games. The fact that THQ won't see a dime of it is THQ's own damn fault for the DRM. I mean, as a Linux user, the DRM really makes it near a full stop to even consider it; without the DRM, I'd probably plop down the money and be content enough even if none of it worked under wine. But, to have to go out of my way and defeat something that even further is trying to stop me from playing? Yea, no thanks.
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for Vessel. :/
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Listen up guys! This is not a bad thing, this is the time to send the other publishers a message that giving gamers options and good deals is beneficial to business. While I understand the disagreement some of you have with these games being DRM, I for one will not get angry unless HumbleBundle stops offering DRM free and Indie titles in favor of these. I am happy with them offering both and if we can encourage more, it will help generate some solid numbers that can help break the illusion of whether or not DRM is providing the businesses an advantage when they see DRM free indie games generating respectable or hopefully more income than DRM'd games.
We should applaud a company for taking a step in the right direction not lambasting them, even though it seems suspect. Companies follow the money and if they can make more money by dressing their CEO's in clown suits instead of a suit and tie then that is what is going to happen. We have the chance to show the other companies how much of a success using services like GOG.com, KickStarter.com, and HumbleBundle.com can be to their revenue stream and they will be paying attention to that more than anything! They only include DRM because they think it actually protects them, but in cases like this, it might be in our best interests to offer a little breathing room!
This is a good point. When I saw the HB email today, I didn't focus on the publisher so much as the games themselves. SR3 just plain sucks. Red Faction: Armageddon wasn't terrible until I got to the end and realized just how linear it was, and how boring the storyline was compared to the last RF game. I don't even remember the other generic titles they were offering.
Well, it's a bit absurd for them to hope to take advantage of an existing platform while not respecting its appeal. The "Humble Bundle" brand traded on three things: 1) supporting indie game developers; 2) being DRM-free; and 3) being cross-platform Win/Mac/Linux. Afaict, this THQ bundle goes 0/3.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I can understand how some of the idealists are upset.. But frankly I could care less.. I've bought a few humble bundles now and the main reason is because a portion of the proceeds (or all if you wish) goes to charity. I also like this pay what you can type model. Quite honestly I haven't played many of the games but if they look semi interesting i'll by them on the off chance I will.
This deal seems to be the best value yet, so I paid more than I normally would.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
The point is that people are much less willing to pay for games that are DRM'd. This is an excellent way to vote with your wallet.
does really anyone play that crap?
"Pirates have been clamoring for publishers to adopt a pay-what-you-want model. THQ is trying that out as a temporary offering"
If they were serious they'd remove the DRM. You don't just go for a quick cash grab because your company is bleeding money, shouldn't give the middle finger to people who would LOVE TO SUPPORT HONEST BUSINESS. It would have been a much better move on their part.
How exactly does this fit with "Humble Bundle?". DRM, non-indie, and single platform? There is plenty of that main-stream. This is not a good sign.
The Humble Bundle changed, or sold out if you like, long ago. This isn't a real surprise. The Humble Bundle is run by Wolfire Games. Their previous, and pretty much only, product being Lugaru, a game with bad graphics where you play a ninja rabbit (yes, really). They've announced a couple other games, for example Overgrowth, but nothing has been released. Overgrowth was announced in 2008 and is still in alpha.
It should be no surprise they haven't had a ton of commercial success.
Well the Humble Bundle was quite a success. Most people left them a reasonable percentage as a tip, so they made quite a bit of money on it, and this has continued with later bundles. In general, the more a bundle sells, the more they make since most don't change the percentages.
So while the first bundle was purely indy titles that almost nobody had heard of (including their own) and source code was offered by some devs at certain levels, after that it has started going far more mainstream.
The reason is this isn't some big developer/publisher with tons of money that is doing this as a fun side thing, this is a little developer who has made FAR more doing this than ever on their games.
they're putting up a bunch of their stuff for darn near free. It's Windows only and DRM'd because that's what they already had ready to go. I think it's a bit much to ask for them to port the games to Mac and strip the DRM off Windows for a charity event....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Smile train is my charitable charity of choice actually (though I give money to a few (arguably) non charitable non profits that do important work too.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Originally I thought this was some kind of December Fools joke early. It wasn't. The horror of it all. I wonder how much M$ paid them (look at the wingdingz 8 logo at the top.)
The Indie game has had a long run on the Windows platform before it becomes part of the Humble Bundle. That said, the return on sales to the Windows gamer has always been about 3/4 of the whole. The return from the Linux gamer about 1/8 of the whole.
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from looking at the HB stats is that. while the Linux gamer will pay generously for the steeply discounted Linux port , the Linux market remains pathetically small.
The Humble Bundle has been looking rather stale and predictable of late ---- with many games making a return engagement. Either the pool of quality Indie titles is smaller than their fans may be willing to admit or the Indie developer is finding newer and more profitable outlets for promotional sales.
As I post, the new Windows-only Humble Bundle has sold over 320,000 units. currently at a rate of 2 sales a second or better, and is closing in fast on its first $2 million in sales, with twelve days yet to go.
It's coming up to Christmas time - why dilute the charities that really need Christmas boosts with one that doesn't? As for the DRM, it's already in the games - why would a company, that is in dire financial straits, spend $$$ to remove DRM from games just for a short sale?
it doesn't seem very humble to make this about indie's, linux or DRM. For me the spirit is about charities more then some technicalities. The complaining will do more harm for those causes then for humble bundle releasing this bundle from a general public pov.
It also struck me as odd because one of the main selling points in the gaming community is that you can get steamkeys... . And seeing how succesfull this bundle is, boy what a mistake...
They are a distributor. Publishers put up the money for a game to be made, and handle marketing and all that. Wolfire is just a distributor.
I'm not hating on them for making money, just pointing out what is going on. If someone like Valve was doing this, well then sure people might be surprised. After all they've all the money in the world so if they started a special indy, DRM free, thing it would be because they believed in the cause.
However Wolfire has had little commercial success. They haven't released many games and the ones they have really haven't had much appeal. So then they came across something that makes them much more money, and they are going in on it far more.
People shouldn't be surprised if they decide they'd rather make money by selling bigger name stuff than sticking to principles.
So basically it's one of the fastest selling bundles in the history of all the bundles. Man, what a total failure it's amounting to. It still has 12 days and 21.5 hours left and it's at $1.5 million and has already outsold 14 out of 19 of the previous bundles.
And this is why you are being branded as a "consumer generation".
You kids don't seem to have a slightest idea about anything else in your lives than 'good deals'.
Yes, by not spending money on something that's in a format I don't use, I am truly a fool. I have been shown the error of my ways by the great Anonymous Coward who buys gasoline for his pedal bike. I go now into the world to spread your gospel.
I'm just completely bemused by the seeming response.
THQ did a good thing. Somebody within the company went to bat for this, made it happen, and people respond like this?
FFS.
I've bought all the Android bundles and the first two PC bundles, because I generally like indie games (and these bundles have included quite a few gems). This bundle, however, is filled with games I feel no desire to play.
But they ARE games many other people, including most of my friends, would like to play. So I forwarded the newsletter to those friends. Chances are some will buy it (even if the ~$6 to include the extra game is too steep, $1 for the rest is damn cheap) and some will subscribe to the newsletter. Next time these hard core gamers get an offer to buy a bunch of indie games for cheap (especially for mobile), I'm sure some of them will buy it too.
This THQ deal basically gives HB lots of "free" marketing, which will likely end up benefitting future Indie bundles.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Dammit, I bought this exact pack in the summer sale!
It's not about THQ getting money or not. By paying for this you're basically saying it's okay for HiB to sell DRM'ed Win-only game subscriptions (seriously, look up Steam license, you're not actually buying games). There is no other meaning to this.
but allocated the price to charity and HB. For indie bundles I pay between $30-40 with the default allocation; I figure a >100Mil/year corporation is mostly in this niche market for the free publicity anyway.
There is a reason for this non-indie bundle. THQ is on the verge of bankruptcy. This is basically their last attempt at getting some much-needed money so that they can release their in-development games (such as the South Park RPG) instead of going under. I suppose they contacted the humble bundle guys and made them an offer in percentages that they couldn't refuse.
I still think they should have called it something else than "Humble Bundle", maybe make another catchy name for enterprise sponsored bundles, but I don't think it was a bad idea by itself. If THQ can get say, 5 or 10 millions from the bundle, it might just allow them to turn around and come back to profitability.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
God forbid a company only meets like 99% of your criteria "But it's not my FAVORITE thing!!" - Louis CK
Now they just need to release DRM-free and cross-platform titles.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Maybe the message is that the EFF probably wouldn't want money raised from the sale of drm encumbered games?
I wouldn't be surprised if the Humble Bundle people had specifically checked that with the EFF before proceeding.
The cool thing that made HB cool was it tried to be all-platform-inclusive while promoting indie software while remaining DRM free. Pay-what-you-want and charitable contributions were also a big plus. I felt warm and fuzzy buying HBs.
If I were to buy this Bundle I'd just feel like a tool. THQ or not, it's totally out of spirit with what HB initially represented.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
From ArsTechnica:
UPDATE
In a response to Ars, Humble Bundle co-founder John Graham assured users the company will "never stop creating Humble Indie Bundles... and the other bundle types we've successfully launched this year. But we’re also eager to see if our pay-what-you-want plus charity model meshes with critically acclaimed AAA content as well."
Graham said the new THQ bundle did not represent a permanent departure from the company's indie roots, and that the company may even release a third indie bundle this year. "This year has also been a year of many experiments for us that fall outside the traditional Humble Indie Bundle framework," Graham told us. "We’re very excited to be able to offer the gaming community a massive sale with blockbuster content and raise money for charity at the same time. We will of course continue to support indies content as a core of our business."
Regarding the lack of Mac and Linux ports this time around, Graham said plainly that, "in the case of this promotion, it would not have been possible for us to deliver this blockbuster content via other means." But Graham also promised the Humble Bundle "will not cease in our quest to bring awesome content to Mac and Linux and Android," and pointed out that the Humble eBook Bundle contained the first digital publication of Neil Gaiman's graphic novel Signal to Noise.
No I didn't he's looking for a bundle from Blizzard (Activision) and Maxis (EA).
When you think about it, giving someone the source code for syphilis is the cause of the problem.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
I've faithfully bought all Humble bundles and registered as a linux user and was quite generous in the amount I've paid. However for this one I paid $.01 over the minimum and registered as a Winders user. I allocated all the money to go as a Humble Tip.
I started with nothing and have most of it left.
Look no one can debate the facts. This bundle is making more money than previous bundles and will likely end up dwarfing the previous totals. More money for charities is better than less money for charities. Well done HB.
My issue, and reason for not purchasing this installment is that it feels sordid. I use Linux, Windows and Android and appreciated past bundles because they catered for everyone. I was very happy to support a group that did not care which operating system I wanted to use. I liked reccommending the bundle to friends, perhaps gifting them a copy of a game they'd missed. So I always paid a few quid more than the average as a result.
This bundle seems to have actively targeted one group in order to maximise how much money is made. The group that in all previous multi-platform bundles has paid the least per person (I mean look at the current average - less than $1 per game! - how can anyone pretend the average backer is "charitable"?). The group which always paid the most per person has been excluded. As someone who has tried bundle games on both Linux and Windows, I can say that this group not only gave more, but did so for games that were often riddled with bugs. But I digress.
This bundle is not in the spirit of previous bundles. It does not promote fairness and generosity. It is merely milking a cash cow. There are plenty of other charitable groups to support while the Humble Bundle gets a grip.
Yeah, dropping the no-DRM option and the EFF aren't great but I'm looking at the whole picture and I see no reason not to give them money.
THQ is one of the nicer publishers and not seeing them go under is a good thing. I can even see this being positive for the entire games market (from a gamer's perspective); more competition means more innovation.
As for the DRM... Well, it's Steam. It's already the "I could get this without DRM but Steam is more comfortable and hassle-free enough for me not to care" DRM. I can live with that. I can even live with the Windows-only nature of those games as a one-off thing.
In the end I guess this time I'll give a smaller amount to the HB team than usual but that's about it. Neither will I reduce any amount to zero (Bad THQ! How dare you try to keep yourself afloat through consumer-friendly offers?), nor will I stop paying attention to Humble Bundles altogether. I don't demand perfect karma from people I do business with; "mostly good" is still reasonable.
As long as the THQ bundle is a one-off affair I'm perfectly fine with it.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I split it 25/75 in favor of Child's Play.
I want THQ to make money off of this - or at least cover whatever costs there are associated with it - so that other publishers will try this in the future.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
THQ could try this on their own without any of the infrastructure in place and without any expertise in this kind of offering, leading to a large number of potential problems that would make it much, much more difficult to succeed...
-OR-
They could work with an established partner in the field and avoid a bunch of pitfalls due to inexperience, improve their chances of success, and also give that established partner a framework with which to offer this kind of plan to other publishers in the future and some good charities get a bunch of cash as well...
Everybody - except for zealots - wins with the choices that were made.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I see it as the HB team burning karma in order to help THQ make their pay-what-you-want offering a success. Essentially they're (nonexclusively*) compromising three of their main pillars in order to market the fourth one (pay-what-you-want) to traditional publishers.
If this is a success for THQ then other publishers might also decide to make their content available in this manner. Whether that happens through a "Humble Commercial Bundle" spin-off or entirely separately from the HB team remains to be seen - but if it happens at all it's most likely going to be a good thing for consumers. Hey, perhaps the AAA publishers might even also make charity a part of their pay-what-you-want offerings. I'd welcome "let's split money with a charity" being seen as a valid business strategy.
* They already anonunced that they will "never stop" delivering DRM-free cross-platform indie bundles.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Spent $20 on one of their "indi" games, and it was really an alpha. Full of bugs and features that basically made you have to restart the game every 5 minutes. I could get through one mission much less the compaign. AI was about worthless. I didn't post on the forums for support because many others with exactly the same issues had posted and instead of receiving support, they're issue was treated as if they committed blasphemy against the all holy of indi games. The non-working AI was excused by supporters as being not needed because you should have someone come over to your house and play with you.
I decided to buy this Windows/Steam bundle for $13.37 (about € 10,-) with the default split (THQ 8.69, charity 2.67, Humble tip 2.01) and was quite happy to see that on the download page you can still select your contribution to count as, for statistical purposes, for Linux. I'd be quite curious to see how many other folks did this.
Perfect is the enemy of done.
Geek card hand-in time!
Pulling up firebug, we can see the stats update is a constant swarm of data in the form: [[{"product": "thqbundle", "_timestamp": 1354300639, "stats": {"rawtotal": 2367272.1873848438, "goodwill": null, "numberofcontributions": {"windows": 370102, "mac": 30179, "total": 416354.0, "android": 0, "linux": 10563}, "rawplatformtotals": {"windows": 2076567.8200000001, "mac": 188377.39999999999, "android": 0.0, "linux": 72808.139999999999}}}],"13543006391584274"]
Now, on this we can see: "numberofcontributions": {"windows": 370102, "mac": 30179, "total": 416354.0, "android": 0, "linux": 10563}
But also: "rawplatformtotals": {"windows": 2076567.8200000001, "mac": 188377.39999999999, "android": 0.0, "linux": 72808.139999999999}
An educated guess takes the latter as the actual cash amounts, so the number of Linux-credited payments is 10563, 2.53% of the total.
We see that on average windows-based people spend $5.61 on the game but linux people $6.89. Of course these 'linux people' like yourself can only use the game on a windows box, but still, always good to see the numbers behind what is going on. (Also had some interesting looks at the PubNub system that is the backend for these stats. Very interesting system)
...
Awesome. Great find!
Perfect is the enemy of done.
but surely no more a 'publicity grab' than all the indie-game devs trying to make their mark?
*somebody* in THQ has pitched this on the basis they'll get a return on their property of "whatever people think it's worth", and I assume some drone piped up to say that "potentially we'll get nothing back" - just seems pathetic that some posters are gloating on the fact "They gave nothing to the dev" They made the game, they deserve something.
I *actively like Steam* This offer did nothing to dent that either. I paypal up, I get a code I copy&paste into Steam and OOOh there are the games.
Well not exactly with what you've said, but in how it impacts me.
Firstly - I've never had a problem with Steam. I buy games, it appears in my library and it's always loaded if I'm online, or not. I pay and it works. Not only works, but gives me greater convenience than a CD or a bunch of floppies - I get a definite advantage and I've yet to see a downside.
Doesn't make me a DRM fan though - I've had major issues with Origin (oooh a $5 voucher as compensation I can use to buy another game that won't f'in run etc).
I think the original posters selection of Steam and Spotify are valid - yes I know I'm risking being locked out if they screw up, but they haven't and I've got some massive benefits non-DRM platforms are unable to offer.
More to the point, I've stopped pirating certain items. Music (Spotify), Books (Kindle) & Games (Steam) - I can hand-on-heart state I've paid for every single one in the last 5 or so years. Films & TV... erm I'll plead the 5th on that.
It's not a money issue (although I'm sure that depends on personal circumstances), it's an objection to having arbitrary hurdles chucked between me and the media I want. I'm reasonably sure that I'm not alone in this stance. *Most* people don't have an issue with DRM per se. *Most* People actually wish to pay a fair price for the media they consume. If a service offers them the opportunity to do this, then they will - and they'll consume more.
Mainstream publishers are the 'real' bosses.
Assuming the point of Humble-bundles is to raise money for charity - then I'd assume they'd be gunning to get GTA-V and CoDx in bundles ooooh months before the publisher release. That's what would get them the most money.
In reality, I think the HBs are like Steam Sales - a chance to mop up the huge number of people who're aware your game was great, but never quite got around to buying it - but they get the benefit of a the charity-aura, and you feel a bit better about picking it up. The whole DRM & Indie component is entirely irrelevant to most purchasers. If anything getting SR3 into this bundle will get the attention of those who previously were completely unaware of Indie Games.
When the first bundle had a huge boost in last-minute sales after the devs offered to free the source of 4 of the 5 games, I had hoped, they would keep that. I was one of those who paid when they offered to free the games, and I’m pretty sure that they got a huge boost in people who knew the Humble Indie Bundle due to that.
But when the second did not offer freeing the source, I did not pay, and I feared they would go further down that track.
Now Steam comes to GNU/Linux, so being cross-plasform isn’t unique for the Humble Indie Bundle anymore. And they dropped cross-platform support and added DRM. Somehow I saw that coming
Well, they sell their brand while it still holds, but by doing that they burn the ones who brought them where they are today.
Never put effort in a project where you have to *trust* the creator to not misuse it. Free copyleft licenses are a safeguard for contributors - not only the coders, but also for those who promote the project.
Being unpolitical
means being political
without realizing it.
As for the DRM, it's already in the games - why would a company, that is in dire financial straits, spend $$$ to remove DRM from games just for a short sale?
Because it's worth a try, a roll of the dice to see if they win big? It's not like they have a lot to lose.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Maybe the message is that the EFF probably wouldn't want money raised from the sale of drm encumbered games?
The real message is that Wolfire/Humble Bundle just diluted their brand, which was going gangbusters, and now has controversy. Good for a quick buck, but is it worth it in the long run, to erode the perception that their mission is to take and hold the moral high ground?
I say, they just opened the door to some new group would will come out with the "Honest Bundle" or similar, and make a much better effort to stay on-message.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I've already got all but two of them, but it's still a great price and a nice gesture on THQ's part. It really is a pretty genius move on their part, as most people aren't going to buy those older games for the full price on steam, and it gives them some good publicity.
The nerdrage at HumbleBundle is extremely undeserved. For the game it's a great deal on some a higher tier of games. For THQ it's a chance to get some of that Humble Bundle Developer money. All these bundles tend to make the developers more money than they lose pricing so low. You're not punishing anyone by skipping. I punish the industry more by refusing to buy Call of Duty. My favorite part about the rage is how many people seem to think that Humble Bundle is a store. All this "I'll never shop here again" nonsense. It's not a store. They offer bundles from time to time, you buy or you don't buy. HB never had a mandate to serve linux only customers or a promise of DRM free games. Heck I remember the annoyance when some of the bundles don't come with steam codes (other bundle sites I think). If the beloved Steam DRM is really so offensive to you it's much easier to just not buy. You never had to buy every single bundle.
Just another second banana