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Comment by Afforess | Hacker News Reader

I guess this is just me, but I feel humble bundle lost their way a long time ago, when they started selling games with DRM and that we're not multiplatform. I stopped buying from them after that, and this store seems a continuation of that trend. Even the name humble bundle seems self-righteous to me, considering they are just a store.

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I adored the Humble Bundle for its idealism and for spearheading DRM-free and Linux gaming. It seems that idealism doesn't always pay the bills.

I feel like when hungry-VC-fueled massive growth is the goal, no good result ever pays the bills : /

It's sad for me to see companies just keep pushing and pushing when they could have stopped at something great and just got better at that.

GOG.com has the DRM-free angle fairly well covered, so there wasn't a lot of room left there unless they wanted to compete. I think the pivot towards a charitable focus was a reasonable move, even if not exactly in line with their initial goals.

GOG.com doesn't do Linux, while Humble Bundles largely became popular with that crowd first.

Funny that GOG.com does its first (I think) 100% charity run at this moment: http://www.gog.com/news/charity_promo_pick_3_games_donate_5_...

Dang, then if Linux is the only thing Humble Bundle has to fall back on, they're really going to feel the squeeze from Steam.

It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out, maybe they'll find their niche.

Steam really needs more competition from DRM free distributors, but HB failed to remain DRM free. So GOG is the only one left.

There's a GoGOnLinux project

http://www.gogonlinux.com/

Thanks for the link, I was not aware of that. Seems like GOG doesn't like what they do too much, though...

I prefer this one:

* https://github.com/Sude-/lgogdownloader

* https://secure.gog.com/forum/general/lgogdownloader_gogdownl...

Don't forget to vote for Linux support on GOG if you didn't yet: https://secure.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_g...

I wish GOG.com would set up some US-based banking.

I've stopped buying things from them, even though I want to, because my bank freaks out every time, due to "the high levels of credit card fraud originating from Cyprus".

The last time I bought from GOG my bank started declining every purchase on my card thereafter until I called them. Apparently they called me, but had an old number.

In any case, I'm sure GOG is set up this way to avoid taxes so it's probably worth it for them, even if it's a hassle for some subset of their users.

It freaked once for me, but after I confirmed it was OK, they don't do it anymore. May be GOG should start accepting bitcoins. Feel free to vote: https://secure.gog.com/wishlist/site/the_ability_to_purchase...

Humble Bundle accepts them already.

I think you need a saner bank. As per my settings, I get an international transaction alert email, but that's it.

Not that long ago I think? The last one I paid attention to was still all about indie games and linux support. Just checked again and now they're selling FEAR and Batman for Windows only...

I'm pretty sure all of their _INDIE_ humble bundles were cross-platform and DRM free. The publisher-specific ones weren't.

I never really understood why publishers are supposed to be brain dead to use DRM, while independent studios are supposed to be smart not to use it.

I think it's not necessary because "one is smart and other is not."

Here are some of my thoughts on this:

1) It's probably not a decision of people who understands deep understanding of technology and implication in bigger publisher. It could be some "suit" type of people who don't even know how DRM works, or their legal department.

2) Publishers can actually afford DRM -- I will be honest that I don't know how much DRM solutions actually cost, but activation servers won't run for free. Simply, a lot of independent studios don't have enough resources to maintain DRMs. DRMs would probably increase support case as well (there will be more support inquiries coming in; people will be running out of activation count, or their computer can't talk to activation server) which a lot of smaller studios just don't want to deal with.

It often does more to inconvenience customers than stop pirates.

Not often - practically always.

Big-name games always get cracked and pirated, DRM or no. Indie not so much.

So, it means DRM has no relevance anyway. Then why is it used?

By the big publishers? Conservative, herd mentality, existing publishing agreements, misaligned incentives between publishers and distributors.

By indies? I didn't think any of them bothered, but apparently some do?

I was mostly asking about big publishers. For me it looks like big equals to having no common or even business sense in this case. Which is weird.

Keynes' comment about bankers applies. There's very little incentive for the people who run these big publishers to take risks.

But this is not about risks. It's about not being dumb punishing their own paying users with DRM which has zero effect on piracy. May be most DRM is driven by side ulterior motives which have nothing to do with piracy.

I'm with you, for different reasons. I thought the first couple bundles were fun, novel, and fresh, but when they started pumping out bundles like clockwork I was really turned off.

I think this is the nature of any "deals" service. It requires novelty, but that's short-lived. The same thing happened with Groupon and Woot.

I'm still rooting for HumbleBundle however, because I like that they give the spotlight to small game developers and raise money for good causes.

See, I think they transitioned (or I just didn't realize the truth at first). Initially it was a charity/publicity play, there wasn't even any talk of having a "Humble Bundle 2". But then someone somewhere decided to try to turn the model into a business.

The problem is that there's a limited amount of good, novel, fun games to choose from. I can't say there are always good indie games to play every single month. You are bound to hit the "less interesting games" sooner or later.

I can't say there are always good indie games to play every single month

Then they should have done it once every two months, or once a quarter, or... whatever timeframe worked.

When did that happen? I've bought most bundles, and not a single game had DRM or didn't work on Linux.

Not a single game didn't work on Linux? Check out the current bundle. As far as I know none of the games work on Linux? They used to mention platform prominently. Now there's absolutely no mention on the front page of Linux, nor do they have the platform money split...

Definitely not the first time recently either.

Huh, weird, I definitely didn't notice that. The last one I bought was two or three bundles ago, and I only use Linux, so pretty much all of them ran? I may just be mistaken.

I thought it was the Humble Indie Bundles that run on win/linux/mac, and that's still true as far as I know.

Yep, and the "with/for Android" bundles too, for the most part. (Not the Mobile bundles, though.)

Of the current bundle nothing runs on Linux and only one runs on Mac. Of the Origin bundle only Sims runs on Mac (and nothing on Linux)... Guess it's only the ones where they sell the 'big' games.

Steam on Windows only is pretty common.

I bought a number of early bundles, and there's quite a few games where the linux port was unavailable, broken, or very-buggy-but-never-updated.

Awesomenauts in Humble Indie Bundle 8 was not DRM-free. It is essentially a 3v3 arena action game, and DRM is required to play online.

Did you see all the recent Steam only / Origin only bundles? Nothing DRM free about them, and they become more and more common, while the DRM free ones become a rarity.

We are comparing new, non DRMed, Indie games to DRMed, publisher backed games who have a massive back catalog. I buy the indie games when I can but I also recognize they simply aren't as deep. HB relies on a good amount of churn every month and I suspect they simply exhausted the supply of Indie games that can be bundled.

May be, but GOG managed to stay successful and profitable without resorting to selling DRM junk. Why HB can't then? GOG actually puts an effort to convince publishers to release their games DRM free. Even legacy ones like EA (at least for their older titles). And that's not easy, but it helps to overcome publishers' stupidity and inertia when they see that DRM free sales are not "dangerous". HB can do something similar, but it requires work.

Have you found a use case for needing DRM-free games? I haven't so I'm not sure why that would be a turn-off except for principle.

I think the name works; cause they give to charity in every sale I've seen them do. Humble came from working with mostly indie game developers and they still do a lot with them. I personally like their model.

Humble also comes because it's a, mostly, pay what you want model. You can pay just a single dollar and get a handful of games, that's pretty humble.

Except it's now turned into "pay what you want as long as it's more than average"; to which I automatically responded by paying $0.01 more than average instead of my usual round $20...

No. It's still pay what you want (although I think there's a min req of 1 dollar for getting steam keys)

You have to pay more than the average to get the 'extra games'. I'm pretty sure they've had that since the beginning

Nope, the first ones were "pay what you want, get everything" (with the first bundle retroactively adding source code releases for everyone no matter how much they paid, and the next adding extra games half way through the week, again for everyone).

"Pay what you want, the more you pay the more you get" is still technically "pay what you want", but it's a slightly different meaning than the original.

ED> Also, with regards to the $1 minimum for Steam which seems to have become a permanent thing:

"The Humble Indie Bundle 4 overlapped with a large holiday sale on the Steam software service, which offered numerous prizes by completing some achievements associated with the offered games in Steam, including entries into a raffle to win every game on the Steam service. During this overlap, Humble Bundle found that some users were abusing the system, paying the minimum amount ($0.01) for the Bundle, registering new Steam accounts, and using the newly purchased games to improve their chances for the Steam raffle. Humble Bundle considered this "unfair to legitimate entrants" in the Steam contest, and to stop it, the company altered the sale so that only those who paid more than $1.00 would receive Steam keys for the games"

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