By Alec Meer on May 4th, 2010 at 11:04 pm.
Media reportage still has it that Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want experiment a couple of years back was somehow a disaster. Independent gaming has roundly proved the lie: more devs than we can keep up with have offered PWYW deals recently, so clearly something’s going right. It’s good news for gamers too. The Humble Indie Bundle, though, is yer bona fide motherlode. World of Goo, Aquaria, Lugaru, Gish and Penumbra Overture: a collection of the last few years’ finest indies, yours for however many groats you think you can spare. Phenomenal, basically. Better still, a third of the proceeds go to Child’s Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation apiece. Well, by default, You can request that the whole lot goes to charity if you like. Games and kindness: a winning and natural formula (and one that the shrieking anti-games media will never, ever cover.) The deal’s over here, and below the cut is a knowingly rubbish half-rap to promote it.
They’re just here to do the Humble Indie shuffle.
04/05/2010 at 23:08 RiptoR says:
Bought, even tough I already own most of these games.
05/05/2010 at 12:00 Carra says:
Yes, I also already own three of the games. Maybe I’ll spend $5 to get Gish, looks like a fun game.
04/05/2010 at 23:08 Vinraith says:
Yeah, this was reported in the forum’s PC Game Bargains thread (thanks Fede and James G!) and I picked it up pretty much instantly. I’m interested in what various folks end up paying for this one. For my part, I already had Penumbra and World of Goo, didn’t really want Lugaru, so figured $5 apiece for Aquaria and Gish was reasonable, then doubled that to account for the charity split and ended up with $20.
04/05/2010 at 23:46 James G says:
Well I picked up on the offer from the RPS twitter feed so was a bit sneaky there. I figured it would appear on the main page eventually. Dropped it in the forum on the off-chance that they were holding it back for the bargain bucket, and so that I could just mention how good the deal really is. (Will be picking it up myself soon, may have to steal work bandwidth to download some of the stuff though.)
Oh, and seeing as I’m stealing credit, I may as well go the whole hog and spam my ‘wot I think’ on Aquaria:
http://blog.jaspsplace.co.uk/2009/03/01/aquaria/
It is definitely a wot I think rather than a review, as it is all too gushing. But it was written in that moment that follows the completion of a great game (or on finishing a great book) where your mind is still wandering around the world you were immersed in. There is the sense of loss, for can’t read or play it for the first time again, and for a time, other titles just seem unappealing. Frankly, if it can be one of the few games that can achieve that, well, I think that’s enough.
04/05/2010 at 23:09 Dominic White says:
Over the past two hours or so, the money raised by the humble pack has gone from 30k to over 70,000 dollars. As outsiders, we don’t know how much it’s split between devs/charities, but it’s still a lot of money in very little time.
04/05/2010 at 23:11 Dominic White says:
Also, as I already owned all of these games, I put it as $9 for childs play, $1 to the devs to say thanks, and gave the games to a generally non-game-buying friend. Everyone wins!
All five of them are very good games, though. And all in wildly different genres. You’ve got construction puzzle, physics platformer, metroidvania-meets-ecco, first person point-and-click horror adventure, and third-person brawler.
04/05/2010 at 23:15 Vinraith says:
Also noteworthy (and very, very good) is that all of these games run on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux and are completely DRM-free.
04/05/2010 at 23:19 Dominic White says:
And of further bargain-related note, if you like Penumbra: Overture in this pack, you can get the other 1.5 episodes of the story (Overture is where the main plotline ends – Requiem is just a level/puzzle pack with a little bit of epilogue attached) at 75% off from Frictionals site. More info here:
http://www.frictionalgames.com/site/
04/05/2010 at 23:20 subedii says:
Already own World of Goo and Penumbra. Not interested in Lugaru.
Does anyone know whether I can gift those specific games? I mean is it just keys I can give to other people or what? I remember the last indie deal pack (forget what it was called) that included Eufloria, Machinarium, And Yet it Moves (and a few others) allowed you to gift individual games if you wanted.
04/05/2010 at 23:25 Dominic White says:
For those people who say ‘Not interested in lugaru’ – just give it a try. It’s really very good once you get the hang of the control system, and you can pull off some seriously crazy acrobatic moves with a little practice.
Just because the characters are animals doesn’t mean they’re going to be humping all the time. Hell, I’d describe it as more like a hybrid of Watership Down and Conan the Barbarian. Rabbits are hardcore.
05/05/2010 at 04:28 Wulf says:
“Just because the characters are animals doesn’t mean they’re going to be humping all the time. Hell, I’d describe it as more like a hybrid of Watership Down and Conan the Barbarian. Rabbits are hardcore.”
Shh! With radical ideas like that you’ll be breaking misconceptions left and right, it would topple the world order and create chaos of an ilk unbeknownst to our kind, and most will perish!
There, there, folks. You’re right. Something with animals in it is crap, and we should all play games which involve some human character or other dominating all and sundry with a ridiculously phallic weapon. There’s nothing to see here, move along!
(On a more serious note, yes, Lugaru is absolutely incredible if you’ve the sort of mind for something a bit off the wall, I completely agree with Dominic, here. Plus it’s one of the better combat games I’ve ever played, even better than that Kung-Fu mod for Max Payne. No, really, it is!)
05/05/2010 at 08:01 Heliocentric says:
Wh- hardcore? I thought you said no humping.
05/05/2010 at 11:27 Wulf says:
Silly Helio, humping would be softcore, hardcore is something else entirely!
But no, it’s not that kind of hardcore, either!
05/05/2010 at 14:34 Barts says:
“a hybrid of Watership Down and Conan the Barbarian. Rabbits are hardcore.”
You have just gotten my attention with that description. I will play this game, even though I did not intend to initially, just because of that sentence.
Also, kudos for reading Richard Adams book. Too few people do, I reckon.
04/05/2010 at 23:33 DMJ says:
These things always come along when I have no money, and I have too much integrity to offer $0 for it.
05/05/2010 at 14:06 phlebas says:
Have you the integrity to make a donation later when you do have it?
04/05/2010 at 23:40 gutenbergn says:
Awesome that they already raised more than $80k, when I bought the pack some hours ago they had only about $4k.
04/05/2010 at 23:44 nayon says:
I paid 25.13, I already had Penumbra, gave the Aquaria to my girlfriend. I put the games at average value $4, so that’s a fair bit of charity in my opinion. Today was a very nice day, so I feel like I should give back.
04/05/2010 at 23:51 Jimbo says:
Ugh. The charity thing makes an already nauseating concept even worse.
1) Dollars to doughnuts the free advertising leads them to make more profit from this than they would ever make putting the bundle up for the ‘retail value’ of $80. So nothing ‘generous’ in that regard.
2) I wouldn’t be surprised if the charity aspect more than makes up for the third they ‘lose’. It’s a given the charities being on the ticket will boost donations, and again, increase the likelyhood of more free advertising.
Maybe I’m just hard to impress, but if they want me to believe this is an entirely altruistic, then they need to be giving all profits to charity. As it stands, they’re as likely to be making money out of the charities as the other way around.
04/05/2010 at 23:54 Dominic White says:
You do realise that they have a slider there that lets you choose EXACTLY how much money each of the groups gets, right? If you want to give all the money to charity, you can.
You’re being curmudgeonly and paranoid.
05/05/2010 at 00:01 Jimbo says:
You can give it all to charity? Then colour me impressed. These guys are the best!
(I missed the little ‘They get a third! Haha! Not really, they get whatever you want!’ switcheroo.)
05/05/2010 at 02:55 Veret says:
These creative, upstart indie developers found a strategy that makes money for themselves and two charities, and gets quality games into the hands of customers for a reasonable and flexible price? Those absolute bastards. We can’t let them get away with this!
Seriously. I’d imagine you’re right about the economics here, but what part of all that did you mean to complain about?
05/05/2010 at 05:01 Thants says:
Man, that’s one of the most gloomy, glass-half-full post I’ve read in a long time. A way for Indie developers to gain exposure and make some money, and people can pay as much as they want, and money going to worthy charity. This causes you to complain that the developers might make some money along with the charities? Good lord! Maybe if they whipped themselves and burned some money for every sale that would sufficiently prove their devotion to you.
05/05/2010 at 09:03 MD says:
Surely it’s the end result that matters, rather than whether or not they are being purely altruistic. (I can empathise with the emotional tendency to think more highly of someone if they’re acting selflessly than if they’re doing something mutually beneficial. But that’s all it is — an emotional tendency, not something that makes sense as the basis for apportioning praise or blame. If the mutually beneficial route leads to more money being donated to charity than otherwise would have been, and the only ‘downside’ is that the developers ALSO make some money, then it’s a good thing! Giving even more money to charity would be even better, but that’s hardly grounds for criticism when the common alternative is to give nothing. If it is, pretty much anyone who has ever donated to charity deserves criticism for not donating more than they did. And we all deserve a flogging for sitting here writing trivial comments rather than using every minute we have to help people.)
I personally wish they hadn’t restricted it to Child’s Play and the EFF, but that’s another matter. And again, when the default is to do nothing, people should be applauded for doing something rather than attacked for not doing enough.
05/05/2010 at 12:46 Jimbo says:
Hardly. If I donate £10 to charity, it costs me £10 and I get nothing in return – that’s charity. If it costs me nothing and I stand to gain something in return, then it isn’t charity – that doesn’t necessarily make it ‘wrong’, just not charity. The nature of digital distribution, especially of products long past their prime, means that overall this doesn’t ‘cost’ them anything. If anything, I would guess they are going to profit from the association with charity. When this does turn out to be the case, I admit, I am not generous enough to assume that it’s just a happy accident on the part of the developers.
Now, given that the customer gets to decide the split, then you’re right, they aren’t doing anything wrong and they are passing on the responsibility for that decision to the customer/donator. By doing so, they are – in my view – also passing on the right to claim they are donating anything. The customer is essentially making two seperate decisions: ‘how much do I want to pay for these games?’ and ‘how much do I feel like donating to charity today?’ Fortunately for the devs, I suspect their audience is sappy enough for the mere presence of the second question to positively influence their answer to the first.
I don’t think my position is that extreme. If the end result is the devs end up with a big stack of money they wouldn’t otherwise have had, then it isn’t an act of kindness, it’s just an act of business. The kindness is all on the customer/donator deciding to take money out of their own pocket and give to the charities, and it’s those guys that deserve the praise and goodwill. The devs facilitated those acts of kindness, and their reward for doing so is financial – meaning they forfeit my praise and goodwill.
That said, I would not be overly surprised if, at the end of they experiment, they declared that *all* proceeds were going to charity – in which case I would be the first to applaud them, because that would actually be real money coming out of their own pocket. Similarly, if 2D Boy want to announce that their follow up to World of Goo will have a business/charity split business model like this on launch day, then I’ll sit up and take notice, because that would really be costing them something to do.
06/05/2010 at 04:34 JuJuCam says:
Including my $20, they’re approaching $320k. I think this can go down in the history books as a success.
06/05/2010 at 15:30 nakke says:
What absolute nonsense. You’re complaining that, by selling something cheaper they’re eventually probably making more money? What is wrong with you?
But sure, yeah, those goddamn conspiring capitalist monkeys goddamnit they should sell the games at the worst price possible and if not that at least not make a goddamn fuss about it!!!! AND CHARITIES ARE STUPID TOO!!! ARAAARRRRRR
04/05/2010 at 23:57 Jockie says:
Anyone else had issues with paying and not receiving an e-mail? It said to expect it shortly so I don’t want to jump the gun and harrass the support email, but how long did it take for other people?
05/05/2010 at 00:01 gutenbergn says:
I received mine instantly.
05/05/2010 at 00:02 Jockie says:
Cheers, guess it’s harassment time then!
05/05/2010 at 12:10 Clovis says:
Can’t you just “buy” them again for free if it didn’t work for some reason?
05/05/2010 at 00:12 Matzerath says:
Well, I WANT to play the bunny game. Also it’s the only one I don’t have besides Gish.
05/05/2010 at 08:42 Heliocentric says:
Same here,
05/05/2010 at 00:17 malkav11 says:
I know you can give the bundle to someone else, but can you gift individual games out of it? I’m tempted to toss in $5-6ish for Lugaru, the only one I don’t own, but I’d probably bump up to $20 or so if I could pass off the others.
05/05/2010 at 00:18 thedosbox says:
When placing the order, you can specify it’s a gift and will be sent a link. The games themselves are downloaded individually, so you could presumably stick one on a flash drive.
05/05/2010 at 00:22 Serenegoose says:
I just tried the Lugaru demo. It’s an interesting game,and I might grab the bundle just for it, but it’s like the person who made the game actually hates me and wants to kill me. it’s brutal!
05/05/2010 at 04:41 Wulf says:
“Brutal!” Paws of Fury!
>.>
I’m not sure if that was intended or not, but it made me chuckle either way, since they’re both fighting games which feature animals.
05/05/2010 at 00:26 Mistabashi says:
@ malkav11: There’s no DRM on the games at all, so you can give them to whoever you want :)
Also, they should be applauded for giving you the option of choosing exactly how much goes to the devs / charities. Not on any moral grounds, just because it’s a great counter to all the cynical people who decide that any promotion involving charities is a shameless marketing ploy…
05/05/2010 at 00:30 LewieP says:
I’m very impressed with this bundle. Like others have said, the games are great, but more than that this is a really well put together offer. It looks like they’ve learnt from similar endeavours. They tell you average contribution and other useful/interesting stats. They do a good job of making you know that if you give a small amount it will probably be lost as transaction costs.
No middle men, no DRM and broad platform support. This is a real classy promotion.
05/05/2010 at 09:00 bookwormat says:
I agree, that offer is really well implemented. They even got the very little things right, such as that the payment form is directly on the offer page and that it only asks for information that are needed. The whole “I can choose what they do with my money” gives you something to play with. A game within the payment form!
Or I like that you can pay via both paypal or google checkout. Most other people would have ignored checkout because it’s rare on the web so far. But since it is the default way to buy stuff on the android market, lot’s of people are using it.
05/05/2010 at 00:34 Bhazor says:
Any idea which payment method costs less on the recipients end? Seems pointless donating to charity when Paypal takes a healthy cut of each transaction.
05/05/2010 at 01:10 KOuri says:
insta-get! 20$ We need a LOT more like this.
05/05/2010 at 01:24 Quasar says:
Amazing. I shall throw down the Paypalosity just as soon as I’m done writing here.
Hope this goes well – I’m almost certain RPS will run a post-sale story, like with the World of Goo sale?
05/05/2010 at 01:53 Mario Figueiredo says:
Well, I’m putting 60 dollars into it. It’s just the type of thing that deserves my full attention. Why 60 dollars? Because that’s roughly how much I would pay for SC2. A game I won’t be buying over it’s relationship with Activision and this company practices. Whereas indies deserve all that money and then some more. As do the organizations they are trying to help.
But I couldn’t resist and you shouldn’t either: Try to put zero in the amount and then tab to another field :)
05/05/2010 at 01:56 Bassism says:
I wish I had more money at the moment, but I gave what I could, being unemployed as I am.
They’re already over 100k, which is really just mind boggling.
I’d like to see more of these sorts of things. Between offering bundles of games I’d ordinarily never buy, but may very well end up enjoying highly, supporting multi platform DRM free development, supporting charity, and giving people in situations like mine a few new games to chew on while we grind some money into our wallets, this is really just top notch.
05/05/2010 at 02:11 MadMatty says:
haha got it- decided to pay 7 bucks since im skint & unemployed…and dont think i would have got these at the normal price. made a 3-way split, but after, i thought i shouldve sent the child charity 6 bucks and the dev´s 1 or two to cover fees
05/05/2010 at 02:45 mrjaggs says:
Amen to that.
05/05/2010 at 03:29 Tom O'Bedlam says:
$30 for that lot seems fair, 50/50 split to the charities.
05/05/2010 at 03:47 Railick says:
I feel bad, paid a dollar. Still I guess it is one dollar more than they would have had otherwise eh? So far don’t like Gish or the rabbit game, still waiting for the others to download. Already had world of goo so a dollar for just Penumbra and the other one seems a little less bad ;P
05/05/2010 at 06:06 Mr Labbes says:
I think there’s a certain amount that only goes to the ones controlling the “cash flow”, meaning amazon/paypal/whatever. Not sure how high that amount is, but I believe it was one dollar something, so that’s one dollar the devs/charity never see, sorry ;)
05/05/2010 at 04:11 Elusiv3Pastry says:
I’ll pay money to never hear that guy rap ever again.
05/05/2010 at 04:30 abhishek says:
Does the email you specify have to be the same as your paypal account?
05/05/2010 at 04:33 sebmojo says:
Never understood the ‘Radiohead failed’ meme – an average of a fiver, in pure money, when people didn’t have to pay a thing? Going on to sell 3 million copies despite being given away for free previously? Yep, that’s the sort of failure they can afford to have a few times.
05/05/2010 at 04:38 Wulf says:
I had everything but Gish. But I’m tossing them money anyway because I like this initiative and the cut of their jib. The rest of the games, those which are not Gish (and therefore those that I own) I will disseminate between friends based on tastes and such.
Also, Lugaru rocks, it’ll probably be the most misunderstood part of the compilation too, which is a shame.
05/05/2010 at 05:23 MadMatty says:
Oh yes Lugaru- it definetly rocks! cant wait for Overgrowth.
The rest of the games all have something going for them aswell, which is nice- i didnt even have Overture, but i got the other Penumbra games at a previous sale- even tho i hardly played them. Nice to know the start of the story.
05/05/2010 at 05:31 Bassism says:
Lugaru is something that I really want to enjoy, but haven’t found much love in yet. I expect it’ll become more engaging once I get a better handle on the controls.
Aquaria is the one that’s really won my heart. Well, and World of Goo, but I already owned that one. Gish crashed twice on me, and I haven’t dug into Penumbra yet.
Man… now I really have too many games to play.
05/05/2010 at 11:32 Wulf says:
I loved Aquaria, but mostly it just made me long for Ecco the Dolphin for the Megadrive and Dreamcast. So after completing it half-way I just couldn’t stand it any more, and went to dig out my Ecco disc and the appropriate emulators. I still have much love for both games, and I get to play as a dolphin, yay dolphins! I miss that era sometimes, when gaming was so innocent that it could allow players to assume the form of a dolphin without second-guessing it, or worrying that it might not be ‘cool enough’.
Siiiigh.
I’ve since completed Aquaria fully, and all Ecco the Dolphin games again. So if you like Aquaria and you haven’t played Ecco… do buy the Dreamcast version if it interests you as it’s a lovely thing and one of the corner-points of my collection. And you could probably get it for buttons, these days. Oh for an Ecco on the modern day PC, and all the beauty that could allow for. Are you listening, Sega?
05/05/2010 at 15:18 Bassism says:
Yes, absolutely!
It took about 5 seconds for Aquaria to bring back my memories of Ecco. I’m going to have to find my genesis next time I’m at my dad’s.
Never played the dreamcast Ecco though. I’ll have to see if I can find it.
05/05/2010 at 04:42 Rohit says:
Bought for $5, distributed solely to developers.
05/05/2010 at 04:45 Grape Flavor says:
Yeah, I’m giving it all to the developers. Screw the kids. The devs are the ones who made the game. If the kids wanted to “play” the little bastards shouldn’t have gotten sick in the first place.
05/05/2010 at 05:02 Gabe McGrath says:
US$15 = $5 each for the 3 games I don’t have.
Great stuff.
05/05/2010 at 05:14 sbs says:
The only one of those I don’t have is Aquaria, i guess i will give World Of Goo to my girlfriend and – GREAT NOW MY BREAD BUNS BURNED
05/05/2010 at 06:10 Devan says:
Purchased for $20. The total is over $164k right now, which is mighty impressive. I really like how they included EFF even though it’s not really a “pull your heartstrings” kind of charity but is nonetheless very important.
05/05/2010 at 06:40 Egornus says:
Am I the only selfish pig here that payed 0,01 dollar, to see how they would split it?
Maybe it’s cause I have a book about selfish pig laying right next to me…..
05/05/2010 at 06:54 Lukasz says:
actually they won’t split it
in fact you just cost them few cents as paypal will take that 0.01 cent and give them the bill for probably another 5 cents or so.
basically you made developers pay for you to play their game and deprived charities from so needed money.
I hope your mother is proud of you
:D
05/05/2010 at 07:02 Egornus says:
I feel so good now ^^, I didn’t do it even because I can’t miss the money, it was just pure selfishness, and the fact that I think these indie developers are abusing are goodwill.
They saw how much money world of goo raked in in so short of a time, and they think, why not do it again and let these suckers pay even more for some charity.
I mean, you make games because you want, because you love too, don’t bitch then if it isn’t making you tons of money.
These people would just as well charge you 50 bucks for there games if they thoughed it would make them more money, but it won’t so instead they play on your moral sense, I am just here to punish that, hack, I might even buy a 100 more copies^^.
05/05/2010 at 07:19 Lukasz says:
yay for humanity!
05/05/2010 at 07:40 Lars Westergren says:
@Egornus
“these indie developers are abusing are goodwill.”
I…what? You can give as much or as little you want to. You can choose how much of it goes to the devs and how much that goes to charity – including 100%. They go out of their way to give you completely free choice. How the HELL is this abusing your goodwill??
“I mean, you make games because you want, because you love too”
So if someone enjoys their job, they don’t deserve to be paid for it? You’d make a great Dilbert boss.
05/05/2010 at 09:27 Lilliput King says:
Indie developers should be paying ME
05/05/2010 at 07:45 ergonus says:
Ask yourself, how many of these people would have really spent 20 bucks or more, whatever they said they payed, if it was some kind of steam package on sale?!
I think a lot less, by saying, hey we let you decide how much you think this is worth you’re abusing people because people will be inclined to spent more then they want or otherwise would do, it’s basic psychology go look it up.
And sure you deserve to get payed, but just name your price or give it away free, don’t use smart marketing techniques.
05/05/2010 at 07:59 JohnDoe says:
Abusing people by letting them pay whatever they want, and giving them the choice of donating all of it to charity, and providing the games DRM free, and providing it on every major OS?
Yeah, these guys are SUCH terrible people.
05/05/2010 at 08:21 MD says:
Man. Ergonus, I’m pretty sure I’m on the cynical end of the spectrum when it comes to these things, but, well, are you taking the piss?
06/05/2010 at 12:23 Wulf says:
I don’t think he’s taking the piss, and he’s entitled to his opinion no matter how bizarro-world it is.
I think what he’s saying is that he wants a recommended price because he takes umbrage at choice. Given a sale, he’d just see a helpful amount of money written down, which he’d pay and then walk off happily. I know so many people like this. Choice is a necessary evil at best to some.
So I’ll help!
$5 for each game, pay $5 for each game you don’t have. If you don’t have three of the games, pay $15! And remember: Some money is better than no money.
Problem solved!
05/05/2010 at 08:11 d. says:
Well I’m from a poor poor post-communist country, so I paid $12.34 for this miracle. Still, almost twice the average.
05/05/2010 at 08:17 Forceflow says:
Nope.
And holy shit, they must be printing money right now.
05/05/2010 at 08:18 Forceflow says:
That “nope” was a reply to whether or not the mail adress should be the same as your paypal account. (reply failed …)
05/05/2010 at 08:21 Dan says:
Nearing $180k. Brilliant.
05/05/2010 at 08:31 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
I really love this kind of charity. No more bloody magnets, keychains or other useless stuff that you MAY get if you donate enough money. I’m bored of the idea of philanthropy based on Kant and others like him saying that you should be doing it only for the cause itself and not what you might get in return…Screw it, I want to help kids and EFF AND game!
And so I did.
05/05/2010 at 08:39 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
Oh and don’t forget Transartica is FREE on DotEmu beta today and tmrw..the games we’ve been all pretty much waiting for, I guess.
http://www.dotemu.com/download-game/105/transartica
05/05/2010 at 08:41 Sarlix says:
I gave em 20. In the time it took me to pay for it they had all ready raised another $700. It’s up to $181,264 now!
05/05/2010 at 08:44 Hodge says:
I was going to buy Gish, Lugaru and Aquaria this week anyway, so this works out super well for me. That said, even if I already owned all five I still would have chipped in. This kind of thing deserves all the success it finds.
05/05/2010 at 08:50 Heliocentric says:
I actually kinda want gish, god knows about the bunny game, i could play a demo, but whatever, its charity init.
So… I have a hard time valuing the pack over $5 having seen gish for about $2.50 once, even a double up for charity is meagre. Eh, i’ll think about it.
05/05/2010 at 09:29 Lilliput King says:
Bunny game is a bit shonky to be honest. Aquaria is pretty good, though, if you haven’t played that yet.
05/05/2010 at 10:24 Heliocentric says:
Sorry, i didn’t make that clear, i own all but gish and bunny game.
05/05/2010 at 16:39 Wulf says:
To offer another opinion, Lugaru (the bunny game, if you will) is actually pretty awesome, you just have to approach it with the right mindset. Have you ever played anything not of the mainstream? Anything slightly thinky with controls that require more than pointless button mashing? You’ll probably be fine with Lugaru. I’m not saying you’ll like it then, mind you, but it’s an acquired taste, and if you have the taste for it then you’re going to enjoy yourself, quite a lot.
I’d advise trying the demo if you’re uncertain.
05/05/2010 at 17:52 Lilliput King says:
I’ve changed my mind about Lugaru. The fighting is a little imprecise, but the campaign mode is great.
05/05/2010 at 18:37 Wulf says:
It really is.
And there’s so much love there, too. It’s rare I encounter a game like that, it’s just one of those games where a developer wanted to show me something a bit different, rather than doing it solely for the profits.
If people had been like that years ago then Turrican 3D might’ve seen the light of day.
06/05/2010 at 05:59 Matzerath says:
Lugaru … ‘The Bunny Game’ is what it’ll always be to me … is pretty fun, despite its Playstation 1 graphics. Obviously a labor of love, and round-housing rabbits never gets old. This older game definitely makes me excited for the upcoming sequel – I hope the new game’s physics are still wacky enough that you can kick someone right over the horizon.
I’ll note I had a problem in Vista (yeah, I know) where the textures suddenly started glitching into a weird mesh-armor thing, at least until I turned off blood effects. That fixed it.
Also, apparently there are some well-done campaign mods in the maker’s forums.
05/05/2010 at 09:19 Sulkdodds says:
You guys, don’t buy the package! These people are evil! Having a really good deal is a kind of psychological manipulation. Don’t you see? They’re trying to trick you into a mutually beneficial arrangement!
05/05/2010 at 09:38 subedii says:
It’s not the rabbits, I’m just not that into fighting games anymore.
Took me buying Street Fighter 4 to realise this. After playing a few online games and then trying the training mode, I realised that the prospect of actually memorising dozens of long chain pin-point timing accurate combos just to be able to play was one I found nothing if not daunting.
Maybe that’s hypocritical when I’ve spent a fair amount of time learning RTS’s online, but I’m not really that big a fan of fighting games online. A bit too heavily reflex based, even compared to most twitch FPS’s.
05/05/2010 at 09:46 Dominic White says:
The game is nothing like Street Fighter 4, though. It involves punching and kicking, but that’s where the similarities end. There are no moves to remember or combos. The combat is entirely context sensitive. If you run at an enemy full-speed while holding down the kick button, your character will automatically go into a flying kick when within range.
It’s a third person action game controlled with the mouse and WSAD keys.
05/05/2010 at 09:41 Ghiest says:
Bought it for £40, because that’s what I had in my paypal account from selling crap I had on ebay :P. Owned 2 of the games so just gifted it to my brother anyway. Still a good deal for 30+ if you don’t have the games imo.
05/05/2010 at 10:39 Sarlix says:
You sir, are very generous . :)
05/05/2010 at 09:51 Freemon says:
Does anyone know if i can link these games to the steam account? (the ones that steam has/sells) world of goo/penumbra/aquaria and gish.
05/05/2010 at 10:01 Heliocentric says:
Hey, that gift horse has something in its mouth!
05/05/2010 at 10:19 Dominic White says:
Interestingly, they’re almost up to $200,000 taken so far. Assuming the standard equal split (a big assumption, I know), that gives 66.6 thousand to each charity, plus 13.3 thousand to each of the five developers.
I bet Edmund McMillen is wishing this sale had happened earlier, back when he was having to beg for donations to pay for important medical care, because the American health system is fucked.
05/05/2010 at 10:24 redpanda says:
yeah, does anyone knows if you can link the games to your steam account? I don’t think I’m going to play any of this right know. I’d like to buy it as a reservoir for the future “days where I don’t know what to play”, but if I don’t have them on steam there’s a quite big chance I even forget to have bought them.
05/05/2010 at 10:28 Heliocentric says:
This gift horse is hung like…
05/05/2010 at 10:26 Dominic White says:
No, no Steam activations as far as I can see. Why is everyone so obsessed with it, anyway? Just download all five games and burn them to a DVD or something. Far more permanent.
05/05/2010 at 10:33 Heliocentric says:
I have 3 young children, discs are about as permanent as ball lightning.
05/05/2010 at 10:53 Lars Westergren says:
In the email they send you: “Please save this email so that you can download the games again whenever you’d like in the future. Feel free to make local backups though, to save bandwidth.”
05/05/2010 at 10:56 Bioptic says:
Yes – if you’re still not satisfied by having unlimited downloads of DRM-free games, you can simple install them to the SteamApps folder, create a shortcut to the executable in Steam and…presto!
05/05/2010 at 11:27 Mr Pink says:
My personal approach to ensuring my downloaded games hang around is to stash them all in a folder called “Downloaded Games” and add it to my backup set. Sweet, sweet, permanence.
(And if you’re response is “I don’t backup” then you, sir, are a fool)
05/05/2010 at 11:28 Mr Pink says:
Oh God I should register so I get editing. you’re = your. *hangs head in shame*
05/05/2010 at 11:57 redpanda says:
I just have bought them and, surprise!! Linux version of everyone right next to the windows one!!! This is great
05/05/2010 at 12:22 Clovis says:
Won’t someone think of the achievements!
I pretty much always add games to Steam if I can. I might get stuck somewhere with access to a computer. These are some great games to have on Steam to just download whever I am.
Not being able to put them on Steam is hardly a dealbreaker though. It would be nice.
05/05/2010 at 17:59 Vinraith says:
@Dominic
Why is everyone so obsessed with it, anyway?
Because having all your eggs in one precariously placed basket is the hip new thing to do!
06/05/2010 at 12:38 Wulf says:
I buy games from a variety of places. If I need them on Steam then I’ll just add a Steam shortcut, and that’s that problem solved. I hate achievements and will never try to get them.
I completely understand that this is a subjective thing, but I see achievements as “Stress, grief, and anxiety removing fun from your games since the advent of the XBox 360!”. I feel the same way about unlocks. I used the debug mode in Fuel almost immediately to unlock everything, and I’m having more fun now just faffing around than I would have had trying to actually play the game, I’m sure. £2 to go and faff around in a wide, open world on a variety of vehicles really works for me.
I love Steam because it has a nice interface for all of my games, it has a decent offline mode, and Source games have a far more benign form of DRM than just about any other kind of DRM in existence (I’m immediately reminded of The Whispered World, since the Gamer’s Gate version shat bricks and the Steam version was flawless). However, if you can get something DRM free then there’s no problem! Go for that! If it’s limited downloads? Hmmm… I can understand wanting it on Steam instead, but if it’s DRM free and unlimited downloads, then that’s groovy!
I mean, from now on, I’ll be buying only things I see marked as DRM free on Gamer’s Gate since they offer unlimited downloads too and that’s just as good as Steam, but really, what you buy from should be contextual. I’m a huge Steam supporter but I don’t believe in buying things solely from Steam alone.
05/05/2010 at 10:52 Grumpy Moose says:
I accidentally released my bowels when I saw this bundle. All of the five games were very high up my “games to buy list”. I’ll probably gift the bundle to someone else as well. Some of these are perfect material for some of my casual-gaming friends!
05/05/2010 at 11:29 Alexander Norris says:
I already own (and dislike) Gish, World of Goo and Lugaru and have no interest in Penumbra because I am a scaredycat. The only thing I might remotely want is Aquaria but I can’t afford to give them more than $1 and I’d rather not rip them off for all their bad work. At least when I pirate a game I don’t end up legally owning it for next to nothing.
05/05/2010 at 15:58 Lilliput King says:
“I already own (and dislike)… World of Goo”
It’s okay, you wouldn’t enjoy Aquaria anyway.
Because you have no soul
06/05/2010 at 01:18 Will Tomas says:
No, if you pirate it technically you don’t end up legally owning it at all…
05/05/2010 at 11:41 HYPERPOWERi says:
Wake up, people! Don’t you realise that this is a blatant sodomy of everything good and fluffy in this world? These heartless bastards are out to abuse the goodwill of charities and feel up your mom while at it!
Well, they’re not getting a cent out of me! No, my money is going to support the one true pillar of integrity and solidarity — Activision.
/me takes tinfoil hat off.
Bought this for a tenner (only after Lugaru. Already own WoG and P:O) and will repeat-buy at least once again as a gift.
05/05/2010 at 11:47 HYPERPOWERi says:
O MAI GOTT you get to play a mermaid in Aquaria!!!
I’m going to have to throw some more loot at the indies.
05/05/2010 at 17:12 Jimbo says:
Activision do shit tons of charity work. In return they get free advertising (their charity is even called Call of Duty something or other) and, in theory, goodwill Wheres the love for Activision? It’s no different to this setup at all. Except they aren’t part of the ‘indie scene’, so instead of getting treated like the sun is shining out of their ass, they just get treated as what they are – a business acting like a business.
05/05/2010 at 17:54 Wilson says:
@Jimbo – Well the difference in treatment is wrong. It should be reported more perhaps, and they should certainly get kudos for it. I agree with you there completely. But it doesn’t make this any less valid as a charitable exercise. It isn’t that we should be mean and cynical about this Indie Games bundle, we should be more generous and appreciative of Activision’s charity (and other corporate givings to charity).
05/05/2010 at 18:02 Lilliput King says:
Jimbo, what are you on about?
When Activision start offering the chance to pay for MW2 entirely through charity donations we can have this conversation. Until then the situations are a mite incomparable, wouldn’t you say?
05/05/2010 at 11:43 Grumpy Moose says:
And it’s also worth noting that Penumbra Overture comes with a coupon that gives you a 75% discount on the Penumbra Collection. That’s 3 games for 4£!
05/05/2010 at 11:57 Lars Westergren says:
They’ve collected over $200 000 now. Great news. I’m happy both for the causes and the indie devs.
:)
05/05/2010 at 11:58 Barts says:
I have 5USD in my PayPal account and no credit card available at the moment to add more (don’t ask). If I opt to pay 5USD for this bundle, is the gaming community consider me a cheapskate and an asshole?
05/05/2010 at 12:07 Grumpy Moose says:
Don’t worry. I had the exact some problem, but I’ll pay them more in a day or two. I do think I heard the faint sound of Edmund McMillen scratching at my door though. I better hurry up!
05/05/2010 at 12:14 Lars Westergren says:
If $5 is all you are able to pay, pay it. They get something left after PayPal takes their fee, and every little bit counts.
The people who are assholes are those who pay $0.1 and then post the download link at warez sites, destroying the server bandwidths.
05/05/2010 at 14:13 Barts says:
Humans as a species sometimes disappoint me so much… Seriously, what is wrong with these people?
I did pay five bucks, better that than nothing. I don’t care about Penumbra and Lugaru, so… Yea, weak excuse that one. Still, strength is in numbers, every penny counts.
I am spreading the word, though: note on my blog (in making, should be up later today), computer boards I frequent (already done), article on one of the most viewed Polish websites (in making, should be up today).
05/05/2010 at 12:43 Randy Squirrel says:
Took me nearly 2 days to decide to buy L4D2 for £13 last weekend, and about 5 seconds to drop £20 on these guys.
05/05/2010 at 13:29 airtekh says:
Since I only own World of Goo (and that’s tied to Steam), I think this is going to have to be a definite purchase for me.
I appreciate the money going to charity but as for the promotion…. step away from the microphone sir.
05/05/2010 at 13:33 Magic H8 Ball says:
Penumbra is a stand-alone game? Dunno why but I always assumed it’s a mod.
05/05/2010 at 13:38 Ysellian says:
No it’s a stand-alone game and a rather good one aswell. Although not for the faint hearted.
05/05/2010 at 15:09 Risingson says:
I had all but one of these games. And I still bought them, giving the money to the developers. Then I will give them to a friend of mine that never buys any game.
05/05/2010 at 15:14 slaine says:
Paid $20 for this bundle even though I already own Goo. Love the idea of supporting devs and EFF at the same time. Pure awesome. Now with Civ 4 complete (thanks to Wulf) and 5 new indie games, not sure how I’ll manage to find the time to play them all … :/
05/05/2010 at 16:11 Kieron Gillen says:
I’m a little disturbed by the people in this thread who appear to be channeling Dave Tosser unironically.
KG
05/05/2010 at 17:35 Sarlix says:
Whaa? you can channel him?!
*smashes cloning equipment*
05/05/2010 at 18:06 Vinraith says:
@Kieron
Indeed. It’s another example of the internet’s “people bitch about everything, so you can’t take them seriously bitching about anything” paradigm and it’s not at all a helpful thing. How are we supposed to make it clear to Ubi that their DRM is unacceptable when we’ve got people howling about the evil developers and their DRM-free games for charitable donations “scam.”
05/05/2010 at 18:22 Dominic White says:
@Kieron – you think THIS thread is bad? The Something Awful thread is ten times worse. There are people literally furious at the charities of choice.
Across many boards, this mixture of generosity and humility from a bunch of indie devs seems to have pissed off every Daily Mail (or international equivalent) reader on the net.
05/05/2010 at 22:27 Jimbo says:
You gentlemen don’t find it a little ironic to be over here bitching about bitching instead of just replying to me directly? The Dave Tosser thing gets trotted out whenever anybody has the audacity to question anything the indie devs do, so that doesn’t bother me in the least.
I don’t believe I resorted to extreme hyperbole or general frothing to make my point, so if any of you have an actual reply that amounts to more than just misrepresenting my position to knock it down (‘bla bla evil developers’ etc.), then I’m happy to hear it.
Somebody in this thread referred to this as a ‘mutually beneficial arrangement’, which I believe is an accurate assessment. Not evil, not wicked – but based on what we’ve seen so far, do I think it’s reasonable to assume they’re doing it for their own benefit? Absolutely. Why not? You think these 5 games make even a fraction (whatever their cut may end up being) of ~$300k dollars in however long it’s been running so far? You think these guys aren’t smart enough to realise exactly how this would play out?
So yes, ‘mutually beneficial’ is a fair enough way of putting it. ‘Mega-Philanthropic’ is a huge leap of faith away from ‘mutually beneficial’ though, is it not? That’s a leap of faith I’m not prepared to make just because the companies behind it are indie. Not yet anyway, we’ll see how it plays out.
05/05/2010 at 22:59 jalf says:
Ironic? No, I see nothing ironic about it. Try reading all the comments. There are a few that are a teeeeeny bit more… unhinged… than your comment. Perhaps the Dave Tosser thing was not directed at you. :)
06/05/2010 at 12:19 Wulf says:
I have to admit, I purposefully and ironically mimicked Dave Tosser in defence of Lugaru, and I wasn’t expecting anyone to outdo that by actually being Dave Tosser, in the flesh, but there you go!
05/05/2010 at 18:01 Tei says:
This thing, Aquaria, is surprising good ( good as in good production values, but it has some very sloooow start that smelll wll get in speed soon ).
05/05/2010 at 18:22 bookwormat says:
Interesting that nearly 1/4 of the contributions come from the ~1% minority that use linux.
05/05/2010 at 18:31 Vinraith says:
The Linux compatibility is certainly part of the reason I was interested. My copy of World of Goo was already multiplatform, but I had no idea Penumbra even had a Linux-compatible version.
05/05/2010 at 18:31 jalf says:
I feel guilty about paying only $5 for the bundle, but I’m broke at the moment. It was that or not buying it at all.
I’d rather give them a small amount of money than nothing at all.
05/05/2010 at 19:29 Iain says:
I just payed a single cent.
05/05/2010 at 19:54 Vinraith says:
Even covering the cost of the bandwidth to download the games was too much to ask, eh?
05/05/2010 at 23:01 jalf says:
I suspect a cent more than covers the bandwidth costs. Bandwidth is dirt cheap. What this 1 cent probably doesn’t cover are the fees paid to the payment processor (paypal or whoever you paid through)
But the bandwidth? One cent is likely more than enough.
05/05/2010 at 23:40 Vinraith says:
@jalf
Yeah, I didn’t even think about the bank transaction fees, which are undoubtedly far worse. Still, it’s basically taking money from charity then bragging about it, which is pretty much the definition of asinine.
05/05/2010 at 23:49 Lilliput King says:
The transaction fee for paypal is30 cents, not sure about the others.
Pretty bad, forcing people to pay 29 cents so you can play the games they fucking made.
06/05/2010 at 03:59 Wulf says:
I think these things should have a floor value to stop people like Iain doing what he did.
I know a floor value can imply a favoured price, but that’s when you include a ceiling value to balance it out so that people will understand. For example: I’m selling my game on such a system, I have a floor value of $1 (with this explained as covering bank charges) and a ceiling value of $100. I’d advertise this as “Pay what you think my game is worth, $1, $100, or anything in between! The choice is yours.”
I definitely think these systems could use it though, because it’s horribly unfair to make them pay for the bank charges, the bandwidth, and then provide the wretch who paid 1 cent with a number of very good games for free.
06/05/2010 at 10:31 Jimbo says:
No, it isn’t ‘unfair’ and he isn’t ‘forcing’ them to do anything. If you are going to potentially make a loss advertising your product at ‘Pay Whatever You Want!’, then guess what, either don’t do it or don’t complain about it when somebody wants to pay 1 cent. You can’t just have all the upsides of it and none of the downsides.
They could advertise as “Pay Whatever You Want (So Long As We Break Even!)”, but I doubt it would gain more than it loses, because it doesn’t have the same fuzzy tummy appeal, which makes or breaks this entire business model, as demonstrated here.
06/05/2010 at 11:37 Wulf says:
“[...] he isn’t ‘forcing’ them to do anything.”
Except that he is, yeah? I know Devil’s Advocate is awesome and all, I’ve done it myself, but that’s precisely what this is.
If they have to pay PayPal to cover his downloads, then he’s forcing them to dip into their own funds to cover his download, and I think that’s unfair. I think that if they had a floor value so that supercilious sods couldn’t just get some feeling of self-righteous sticking it to the man just by underpaying a group of indies, people wouldn’t think less of them for it. I know I wouldn’t.
“If we don’t charge $1 as a minimum then the charities get nothing.”
Yeah, my sense of ethics says that’s fine, see.
06/05/2010 at 12:46 jalf says:
@Wulf: He’s still not forcing them. They *chose* to allow 1 cent payments in the first place. If they didn’t want 1 cent payments to occur they could have set a minimum price, but they didn’t.
And like Jimbo said, I think they’d make less money overall if they set a floor, because that that would encourage some to just pay the minimum. It would kind of legalize the minimum price, making it ok to just pay that, instead of some higher amount that you think is fitting.
If they say “anything between 1 and 100 dollars is acceptable”, it also implies that $1 is an acceptable price. And so many people will pay $1.
If they say “pay what you think is the right price”, people will have to decide for themselves what is acceptable, and so most people will decide on a pricepoint above $1.
Of course, one thing they could do is just add a little notice informing customers of their transaction cost, so customers can take that into account when choosing how much to pay.
Apart from this, are we sure the same transaction fees are charged in this case? That paypal doesn’t have some kind of special bulk rate or something?
06/05/2010 at 14:42 Wulf says:
@jalf
It’s still forcing their hand in my opinion. They’re relying on good will, and anyone dastardly enough to abuse that is forcing them to dip into their own funds. I’ve worked with charity fund raisers before (see my example below) and occasionally you’ll get some fat toff come in and scoff everything and not donate anything (or just toss a couple of pence). It’s something that I think should be frowned at at the very least.
This is kind of like saying that if someone leaves a window open in the belief that their community was a good one, they chose to be robbed. That’s walking a particularly grey line, right there. Some will say one thing, others will say another, but whichever, I still think it’s unethical and I do think it’s forcing their hand. I won’t think particularly kindly of people who take the 1 cent option, anyway.
05/05/2010 at 19:48 Ysellian says:
You must be mighty proud. ^_^
05/05/2010 at 20:48 Dominic White says:
Yeah, I’d just like to point out that if you pay just one cent, that means that the devleopers have to cover the bandwidth and bank transaction bills.
You are literally taking money away from charity. Not just failing to give, but taking. That is how terrible you are, and if you’re bragging about this, then you’re a horrible, twisted little wretch of of a creature masquerading as a human being.
06/05/2010 at 13:20 MD says:
Too far. Again people are tied up in symbolism and seem to place little importance on the actual end result when making moral judgments. Even if you were right (and I doubt it — if the 1c sales are a liability, it seems pretty unlikely that the developers will pass on a negative cut to the charities), this is, what, 30c or so we’re talking about. Meanwhile, you, I, and probably everyone else in here has wasted a massive multiple of that on useless shit bought for purely selfish reasons. Money that, all up, could have made a significant difference to the lives of those who actually need it. Yet we’re all morally upstanding citizens because our intentions are supposedly good, we’re not *actively* robbing anyone, we hold the right opinions, mouth the right platitudes, and (in some cases) occasionally even put our money where our mouths are. This is bullshit. Every time you waste 30c on something you don’t need, or hoard it unnecessarily, you’re just as much of a “horrible, twisted little wretch of of a creature masquerading as a human being” as he is. Your self-righteousness (not to mention vicious personal abuse) is based on emotion and the avoidance of honest, rational self-assessment. Enjoy your shiny trinkets though! I’m sure the sick, poor and starving won’t begrudge you your indulgences — after all, at least you didn’t (potentially) cost Child’s Play 30c.
06/05/2010 at 14:04 Wulf says:
We’re not all like that, you know.
I have an ongoing subscription to a number of charities, Defenders of Wildlife being one of my personal favourites. So some of us talk the talk, but we back it up by actually being philanthropic too. Not to mention that I’m pretty poor, which is why I have to wait for sales so often before buying anything. I’ve wanted Fuel for a long time, but I had to wait until it was £2 before I bought it. I’d estimate that about 10% of what I get goes out to charities.
And for the same reason I was happy to put a bit of money down on this. There was one game I didn’t have there so I admit it was mutually beneficial, but I could have put down 1 cent for it, and I didn’t, because I wanted a larger sum going to charity than that. Usually if someone asks me to donate to charity, I will. The only thing that bothers me about all this I suppose is that people think it’s okay to take the rewards for charity aid without doing anything to earn those rewards. Instead, they’re making the charity fund-raising event organisers (in this case) pay for their ability to access those rewards.
If this were a real charity fund-raising event, and they had edibles and such for people who donated, and someone came in and started scarfing everything and only dropped a cent (less than one pence!) into their charity box, would that be cool? Of course it wouldn’t.
I’m not saying that it’s illegal or anything, what I am getting at is that it’s horribly unethical, and those who do it have absolutely no sense of ethics whatsoever (to hell with morality), by no measure of ethics could something like going to a fund-raiser and abusing it be considered ethical, these people are pariahs and they should be considered as such. No ‘Get out of your guilt, free!’ card for them. I’m sorry, no, no card. Never a card, the people who do that deserve whatever guilt and harassment they get.
I’m poor, but I have a hell of a lot more honour, honesty, and integrity than some people around here. It seems that being poor makes people honest. :p
To stress it again: They didn’t do anything illegal or against the law, no, they didn’t, but they did do something unethical, and the world has gotten pretty fucked up if we think that unethical exercises should be praised or are even excusable.
06/05/2010 at 14:12 Wulf says:
Concessions I’ll make are: It would be fine if it were a hobo, or if it was someone collecting food for a poor family, then either of those would be ethical.
But in this case it wouldn’t be a hobo and the family wouldn’t be that poor, so neither of those would work. I mean, I’m poor these days, and if I can afford it then I’m bloody well sure that those paying 1 cent could.
Oh yes… there’s also that little thing about games being a luxury whereas food is a necessity.
So we come to the conclusion that robbing charity fund-raisers for luxury items can in no way be ethical. And there you have it. I also suspect that the people paying 1 cent are pretty well off, much more so than I am.
06/05/2010 at 14:16 Dominic White says:
@MD
Oh, look, Dave Tosser ate a thesaurus. All I said is that if you have the opportunity to knowing take money from a charity, and then have the nerve to brag about it, you are a fucking horrible person and I would kindly appreciate it if you removed yourself from the internet (and ideally the internet) post-haste.
Even if it is only a small amount of money, it is a horribly selfish and immoral act, and should be chastised at every possible step, lest it actually become acceptable behaviour.
I’ve got direct debits from my bank account to a couple of charities, and I’m practically broke (I think I’ve got about £300 to my name right now?). What good are you doing, other than ham-fistedly trying to justify ripping off people who are trying to actually do some good in the world?
06/05/2010 at 14:18 Dominic White says:
Curse you lack of coffee (and edit function!). That was meant to read ‘remove yourself from the internet (and ideally the gene pool)’.
Thank you and – (comment directed to anyone who would gladly cost charities money in the name of getting free games) – fuck right off.
06/05/2010 at 16:13 Lilliput King says:
“Too far. Again people are tied up in symbolism and seem to place little importance on the actual end result when making moral judgments[sic]”
To be honest, that kind of ethic doesn’t really work on its own. (“Why don’t I divide up my estate and sell everything I own in order to feed the homeless for one day? It’s a better result! Why don’t I divide up my body in order to supply a couple of people organs? It’s a better result!)
Regardless of what system you use, I’d hope you can at least draw a distinction between those who support charities and those who incur them costs. If not, it’s your system that needs inspecting
06/05/2010 at 00:55 kyle says:
what the hell it didnt let me download it after i paid for it!!!!
06/05/2010 at 12:16 Wulf says:
Send them an email and tell them which email address your PayPal account is tied to, they’ll verify this and get on it right away.
It’s Wolfire, they’re awesome like that.
06/05/2010 at 01:28 somedude says:
I paid $18, which seemed fair enough to me, for a charitable donation and the one game out of the batch I was interested in (Aquaria, although after reading about some of the others here, might give them a look as well).
I don’t have any problem with it being a mutually beneficial arrangement – developers get a bit more cash (which hopefully encourages them to produce more interesting new games), I get to kick a few extra bucks to charities that I already support, and I pick up a few new games to try on my Mac laptop.
06/05/2010 at 03:49 Kevbo says:
So happy to see Aquaria getting more attention since that game is simply phenomenal in my opinion. I really wish more people could just experience that game since its a masterpiece. Hopefully this will get it in the hands of more gamers! Gotta love Indies for keeping the gaming scene fresh :)
06/05/2010 at 04:52 Stabby says:
- Total raised $319,926
- Average contribution $7.95
- Number of contributions 40226
crazy.. I would say that $320,000 split 7 ways is pretty awesome. Almost $50,000 to each of the companies, charity and EFF
06/05/2010 at 10:21 clovist says:
Can i pay $0 for it? no? then its not pay what you want
06/05/2010 at 12:14 Wulf says:
I encourage you to try, regardless.
The result is apparently quite fitting.
06/05/2010 at 13:27 Sinomatic says:
PAY what you want…..$0 is not paying.
06/05/2010 at 14:40 DXN says:
I am OUTRAGED that I can’t pay sqrt(e^-i) kryptonian credits for this game!
GGOOOODDDDDDD DDDAMMMMMIIIITTTTTTTT
[haters.gif]
Anyway, the bundle is doing super-well so far! Yay everyone! At this rate they might break $1m. Noteworthy!
06/05/2010 at 16:25 dingo says:
I had all games but Lugaru already but I wanted a RM free Aquaria for ages (mine was on Steam before).
I gave $30 split 50/50 between devs and charity just like in the trailer.
Fantastic idea and I’m more than willing to spend my entertainment money this way as long as Ubi etc. try to f… with me and consider me a threat instead of something to be courted as a paying customer.
Choke on our DRM bulls… and sell your games to the console crowd.
06/05/2010 at 18:08 lethial says:
Paid $35 total to gift it to a friend (since I have all the games in the bundle).
Then today, I saw this: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy
now I feel that I need to buy another bundle for another friend…
WHY CAN’T MORE DEVS REALIZES THIS!? And @RPS, you guys so should front page the article, given all the piracy debates of late.
06/05/2010 at 23:24 Wulf says:
The maddening thing is that I’ve been saying this forever, all over the Internet, and I’ve posted just this in RPS comments threads many times, too. But it takes a big name before people perk up their ears and actually bloody listen, so I’m very pleased that Wolfire wrote this up.
Yes, please everyone, do understand what that article tells you. Tell your friends, tell your journalistic friends if you have them, tell whomever might be interested, because it seems that no one’s really bothering to fight the misinformation. Piracy is a problem, but it’s a small problem compared to the real problem: unless it’s indie us PC gamers have to choose between unbelievably shitty ports of console games that aren’t exactly to our taste or poorly translated European games, most of the time.
You’ll get the odd console game that works on the PC and has a good enough port, and you’ll also get the occasional European title that has a proper translation, but if the quality of games on average is low then you can’t expect people to take notice. People are smarter than that, and they realise that a company is saying “Well, yeah, we’ll screw PC gamers, we’ll just throw them a few scraps of a port once we’ve finished this banquet of a console game, maybe. Oh, and we won’t bother with a demo either, they don’t deserve it, all though our lovely console-owning boys and girls do!”
Any high-quality games that are designed specifically for a target demographic will sell. See: most indie games. If a game isn’t selling then don’t slap draconian DRM on your games or kick up a fuss on forums about the evil pirates, instead, find out why the games aren’t selling and make better games, those games will sell. Probably like hotcakes.
If you know you’re making a great game but your sales aren’t high enough, then you’ve targeted too niche of a demographic, and you either need to live with that or you need to broaden your demographic, I could think of some that fit into this example. Pointing the finger at pirates isn’t going to magically solve anything. What I see is this: good games sell, good games with a very narrow field of interest probably won’t sell (but they might still be good), poor quality games are shit games that won’t sell, and games targeted at the wrong demographic are also seen as shit games, and they won’t sell either. It’s as simple as that.
What developers need to do is move all this bloody money they’re putting into DRM away from that and into market analysis.
06/05/2010 at 21:10 Agrajag says:
Bloody hell, they got almost 400K by now
06/05/2010 at 21:46 Bassism says:
Lethial, thanks for linking that blog post. It’s insightful, well written, and has an argument that I haven’t seen before.
I second the motion to link it on the front page. If nothing else, it deserves a mention in the Sunday Papers.
07/05/2010 at 14:46 Max says:
Paid about a fiver for it as I’m not in the money at the moment, will probably give more later. Some crazy git has given $1000!
07/05/2010 at 22:48 Iain says:
They didn’t even protect the links.
God-damn these guys are dumb. If someone sends you the download link you can just download them yourself.
Indies are fucking idiots.
09/05/2010 at 15:53 James G says:
Wow! This is great:
Dear Humble Bundle supporter,
I have a small announcement you might be interested in. This morning, I was talking to fellow indie studio Amanita Design. They wanted to donate to the Humble Indie Bundle too — but in a unique way. They decided to donate their award-winning, cross-platform game, Samorost 2, to the bundle! It is really a great game, and I encourage you to go download it on your updated Humble Bundle key page.
10/05/2010 at 13:08 Magic H8 Ball says:
I do believe your definition of a big name is quite warped.
10/05/2010 at 14:55 Toddeon says:
Wow most people only talk abaut Child’s Play and not abaut the EFF (or other charitys).
Yeah the sad Children. You give them money that children in rich western countrys arent bored anymore…. (minus the one clinic in egypt)..
Screw the figth for civil liberties in the Internet Age. You got little jimmy a PSP because he forgot his own at home. Yes it’s a good thing for a child to have something to play in a time of need. Like a painful time bevore/after an op or medicamentation with side effects. But you know how abaut something more positve …. like money for little children that cant afford a freaking op or medicamentation.
12/05/2010 at 10:30 atanok says:
Child’s Play’s mission is putting video games in select hospitals for children to play.
I can’t say I agree with that mission very much, so I’m giving its part to the EFF, which fights for everyone’s electronic freedom, a very much important battlefront nowadays, with the threats to net neutrality, ISP abuse and proliferation of Digital Restrictions Management and the Treacherous Computing Platform.