Indie Pay-What-You-Want Bundle Reaches $1 Million 238
Spinnacre writes "The week-long Humble Indie Bundle, a pay-what-you-feel-adequate promotion, reached a million dollars in total contributions with just 50 minutes of sale time remaining. For a minimum price of a penny, gamers could get DRM-free downloads for World of Goo, Gish, Aquaria, Lugaru, Penumbra: Overture, and Samorost 2. The bundle gained great success immediately after being featured on sites such as Ars Technica and Slashdot for followup blog posts about game piracy and multi-platform gaming." According to this tweet from Steve Swink, the milestone means that several games will release their source code. In fact Wolfire is in the process of creating a public source code repository for Lugaru; Aquaria, Gish, and Penumbra: Overture are also due to be opened up within the next week.
And even more platforms can benefit! (Score:3, Informative)
I'm ecstatic that they're going to open the source!
Having just experienced the Alpha 2 release of Haiku, I'd love to see a few of these games ported to that platform as well.
Now I'm glad I bought the Humble Indie Bundle, even though I haven't had time to play any of the games yet ;)
Aquaria also OSS (Score:5, Informative)
Along with Gish, Penumbra Overture, and Lugaru, Aquaria is also being open sourced. Lugaru's game engine was GPL'd but they're retaining the art assets, so I'm assuming the others will follow suit.
Great week for indie devs, charities, and gamers all around.
The stats (Score:5, Informative)
They offer the following breakdown:
Developers: $134k each
Childsplay: $154k
EFF: $148k
Pretty amazing for seven days. I admit I kicked in a little extra once I heard they'd go open source if they hit $1M. Note that the open source bit doesn't mean free as in free beer: Lugaru for example is including enough assets in the release that the demo will build, but the assets are still proprietary. As another reward for breaking $1M they also extended the promotion another 7 days.
Penumbra (Score:5, Informative)
Penumbra is pants-wetting scary. Seriously, if you don't play any other game offered in this bundle, check it out. It ranks up there with Dead Space, Clock Tower, Undying, Fatal Frame, and the other big boys.
In fact, if the circumstances and your attitude are right, I daresay it challenges the crown for scariest game series.
Re:The stats (Score:3, Informative)
The counter has been fixed to a four day extension, they mentioned that was what they intended on IRC.
Re:Good (Score:3, Informative)
Considering this was already the SECOND time this has happened recently...
http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/10/28/030237/2D-Boy-Posts-Pay-What-You-Want-Final-Wrap-up [slashdot.org]
Penumbra rocks (Score:2, Informative)
I bought Penumbra Overture (and its sequel, Black Plague) a while back on Steam and I just have to plug them here in case you've missed them and since they're so awesome. They're basically 1st person horror adventures. The protagonist ends up stuck in a mine in Greenland and has to explore it in order to get out while unraveling the mystery of what's happened there. The games are very atmospheric and have an interesting, unfolding storyline with supernatural elements (Black Plague takes off where Overture ends). Reminds me of X-Files episodes where Mulder and Scully get stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere where strange things are happening, except the Penumbra protagonist doesn't have a partner. You should play them alone at night or when it's dark for maximum effect (it's not a pitch-black-surprise-monster-attack-in-your-face a la Doom 3 game). Overture has little combat; Black Plague has none.
The games are about as long as Half-Life 2 Episode 2, and IMO way better. Too bad they were underrated/overlooked by the gaming press. The third Penumbra game, Requiem, is a puzzle game without a storyline unlike the first two. I haven't bothered finishing it yet.
Re:Penumbra (Score:3, Informative)
And according to the FAQ [wolfire.com], Frictional Games is offering the rest of the Penumbra series to Humble Bundle purchases for $5...
Which means another 2 more games for $5.
Re:The stats (Score:2, Informative)
Re:David Rosen is shady (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I chose $50 (Score:3, Informative)
There seem to be very few transactions these days that are a positive-sum. This is one of them.
Any voluntary transaction between two parties with full knowledge (or close enough to full knowledge) is positive-sum. In particular, each party must be benefiting, because otherwise he wouldn't participate. You give money to a store owner in exchange for a product because you want the product more than the money, and he wants the money more than the product: you're both better off afterwards. This is why economic activity creates wealth, rather than just shifting it around.