Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Defenestration]

I like the "LET RELIC FINISH DoW3" contributor.

[Shinra]

if anyone is as confused as i was, THQ is doing a humble bundle with saints row the third, darksiders, the company of heroes games and red faction armageddon for 6 bucks.

[Esperath]

speaking of which, free SR3 code for whoever wants it

[Thad]

Condemnation is swift; John Graham: "Hey, look over there!"

[Shinra]

Why condemn the humble bundle guys? I don't get it. They never had an obligation to only couple with indie game developers, and if you want to stick it to the man just donate the whole amount to Charity.

It's not the first game with a major publisher released, anyway. Bastion masqueraded as an indie title, but it was published by a major studio. So was Psychonauts.

[TA]

Yeah, it is and always has been the Humble Bundle, with Indie as a characterization of specific bundles.

[Shinra]

I guess I can see the argument about DRM, but they're still donating proceeds to charity and you can still buy as many copies as you want for as cheap as you want. If anything this would just grow the existing base of people aware of the humble bundle, wouldn't it? Won't that mean even bigger gains for indie developers who distribute through the humble bundle?

[Zaratustra]

Except it's more likely these people will want to buy regular games, and so mainstream companies get more of an incentive to bundle through HB.

[Brentai]

The people who are upset that the've drifted out of the indie sphere don't really have a case but I can't blame them for being upset.  The people who are upset that HIB has dropped its stance on DRM have a case.  Not only are we tossing the "see kids this works" aspect out the windah, but the free-distribution model is really the only way the pay-what-you-want model ever made any sense.  It's a subtle shift from an open economy to a closed one with really, really bad negotiation practices.

Bought it anyway though.

[Thad]

The people who are upset that the've drifted out of the indie sphere don't really have a case but I can't blame them for being upset.

Weeell, a few of the comments on that Ars article make a good point I think: they shouldn't have kept the "Humble Bundle" branding if they were going to diverge so heavily from the original premise.  While TA's correct that they've had "Humble eBook Bundle", "Humble Music Bundle", "Humble Bundle for Android", et al, they've generally stuck to the "Indie" part of the name even when they weren't using it.  (And while Shinra's correct that there have been other individual contributions that weren't independent, I can't remember an occasion when the ENTIRE BUNDLE was from a major publisher.)

Not-So-Humble Bundle could have worked.  Or just the "THQ Bundle".  I'm not even saying don't use the humblebundle.com domain name, just, you know, change the banner a bit more.

(In fairness, the word "Indie" isn't anywhere in the domain name or the banner, and they're not calling this Humble Bundle 7 or anything.  I think semantics are important, but it IS a semantic issue.)

The people who are upset that HIB has dropped its stance on DRM have a case.  Not only are we tossing the "see kids this works" aspect out the windah, but the free-distribution model is really the only way the pay-what-you-want model ever made any sense.  It's a subtle shift from an open economy to a closed one with really, really bad negotiation practices.

Yeah, I have a problem with that.  It is a very bad precedent, and, seeing as it's made a million dollars in one day, we can pretty much guarantee it WILL set a precedent.

[Brentai]

OTOH if we see a huge trend of major publishers moving this way we might end up with them realizing they're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect penny merchandise, and it'll die off by itself.

Far-fetched, sure, but common sense says the DRM bubble has to burst SOMEhow, and actual common sense has not proven to be a reliable mechanism for it.

[Shinra]

OTOH if we see a huge trend of major publishers moving this way we might end up with them realizing they're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect penny merchandise, and it'll die off by itself.

Far-fetched, sure, but common sense says the DRM bubble has to burst SOMEhow, and actual common sense has not proven to be a reliable mechanism for it.

it would be amazing if THQ made as much off these sales as they do a normal game release and publicized it. "Hey, guys, it turns out when you give people the chance to pay whatever they want you can still make money and hedge pirates out completely by making it less convenient than just buying the product!"

[Brentai]

Well, we're looking at a huge collection of titles that actually turned a profit (and I think RFA?), so I wouldn't hold my breath on that.  You could maybe put Homefront out by itself if you wanted to do Le Grande Experiment but I suspect people still wouldn't put in much more than a penny.

Also this bundle doesn't include the hundreds of dollars of DLC for some of these things so there's a little bit of a Free Razor thing going on, though it probably won't take with the crowd that didn't buy SR3 until it was around six bucks.

[A²]

Saints Row Everything Under The Sun was just $12 in the Fall Sale, though.

[Kayma]

..huh. Did not realize the DRM clause was dropped for this bundle. That tastes sour to me, but it's the only problem I have really.

[TA]

..huh. Did not realize the DRM clause was dropped for this bundle. That tastes sour to me, but it's the only problem I have really.

The DRM in question being steamworks, because the games are distributed via steam keys.

[Brentai]

Yeah they don't have "real" DRM if you don't count Steamworks, but the EFF does on the basis that, yeah, it IS an online connection check, it DOES involve an exchange of PII, it HAS prevented legitimate users from accessing games, it DOES fuck your right of first sale, and a bunch of other stuff that would be terrible if the company in question didn't spend so much time honestly addressing the issues and making its brand trustworthy.

One of the big sticking points for DRM activists here is, oh look, the option to donate to the EFF has been replaced by something else now.  Not exactly surprising considering the HB's kind of veered off from its principles here, but it does make it sound more hollow when one of them tries to get up and say "No this TOTALLY doesn't mean we're done with you (buy HIB7!)"

[Kayma]

..huh. Did not realize the DRM clause was dropped for this bundle. That tastes sour to me, but it's the only problem I have really.

The DRM in question being steamworks, because the games are distributed via steam keys.

Yeah, I certainly don't mind having them on Steam; that's the only way I've used any of their stuff, save for the Linux builds. It's just sort of ideologically depressing that they didn't stick to their normal guns.

[Thad]

One of the big sticking points for DRM activists here is, oh look, the option to donate to the EFF has been replaced by something else now.  Not exactly surprising considering the HB's kind of veered off from its principles here, but it does make it sound more hollow when one of them tries to get up and say "No this TOTALLY doesn't mean we're done with you (buy HIB7!)"

I read one comment saying EFF was already dropped in HB6.  Can anyone confirm or was that just Comments Section Guy Blowing Smoke?

[Brentai]

Looks like it was split between Child's Play and EFF as usual.  The THQ one splits between Child's Play and Red Cross.