Third Humble Bundle Arrives, 'Frozenbyte' Edition 195
supersloshy writes "The team behind last December's successful Humble Indie Bundle 2 (as well as the original Bundle of course) have launched yet another bundle, but this time it's comprised entirely of games by developer Frozenbyte, including Trine, Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds: Survivor, a pre-order of Splot, and the prototype Jack Claw (with source code). All games (except Jack Claw) are, as always, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux-based operating systems and are DRM-free."
Re:It's the next step in Slashdot's evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite right. This is clearly an thinly veiled advertisement for a bundle of DRM free games of which one has the onus of setting one's own price down to the developer/distributor split as well as charitable contributions to organizations that bring joy to children or stand as champions of free speech online.
Hmm... put that way I think I could handle a few more "advertisements." Although, when I think about: successful social/business experiment, an embrace of DRM free media by the groups most likely to be harmed by piracy (indie devs), helping kids in a nerdy way, and crowd sourcing the legal protection of internet freedom - I think I'd call this "news" although possibly just of interest "for nerds," but definitely "stuff that matters" in my opinion.
Glad I heard the announcement.
Re:It's the next step in Slashdot's evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
These bundles raise money for Child's Play, they challenge the conventional release model, and they're DRM-free Linux games.
If that isn't "News For Nerds", then I don't know what is.
Why 'break-even', isn't (Score:5, Insightful)
For any company or even non-profit organization, unless they are already substantially developed, part of the goal is some level of growth. Break-even means there's not really a possibility for growth, and the organization will have a hard time getting better.
For the folks behind the HIB's, that might mean that with a bit more money, perhaps they can provide more technical support people (though they've done, from what I can tell, an awesome job with what they had, I also think they ended up all working 80+ hour weeks during the big events). It also might mean that, if they can make a bit of money, perhaps they can get developers of better titles to participate in the future, maybe a little more publicity to get even more people to hear about and particpate in the bundles, better servers, better website design, etc.
Now, there's a difference between a 'healthy' profit and a glutonous one, of course, but a little bit of profit really is necessary for any organization to thrive in the future, not just 'break-even'.