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Businesses DRM Electronic Frontier Foundation The Almighty Buck Games

The Humble Indie Bundle 290

Posted by kdawson from the now-how-much-would-you-pay dept.
supersloshy writes "Last year, 2D Boy, the developers of the popular independent game World of Goo, had a pay-what-you-want birthday sale with curious results. For the next seven days, Wolfire Games is attempting the same kind of sale, but with some new twists. Wolfire Games' Humble Indie Bundle contains five independent games (World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra) with no DRM and they are all cross-platform. In addition to directly supporting the developers of these five games, part of the money also goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Child's Play Charity. No matter how much you spend, you also get to choose who your money goes to (charity only, developers only, evenly, or custom)."
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The Humble Indie Bundle More

The Humble Indie Bundle

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  • From TFA:

    All of the games work great on Mac, Windows, and Linux. We didn't want to leave anyone out.

    No *BSD, but still kinda neat!

    • No *BSD, but still kinda neat!

      I agree, this is a great and legitimate means of getting people involved with supporting the work of the people who make the medias we know and love.

  • Great games. I've already bought WoG last year, and I will probably snag the rest of these for $25 or so.

  • WoG... (Score:2)

    by VMaN ( 164134 )

    World of Goo alone is worth your time and money.

  • Support these guys! (Score:5, Informative)

    by khellendros1984 ( 792761 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @03:40PM (#32090620) Journal
    I went in for $40. I've got World of Goo already, but I thought it would be nice to have Linux versions of these games. I figure that if even the indy devs don't get financial support for publishing Linux versions of software, the market will stay slow and dry forever.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by RogueSeven ( 965183 )
      Agreed. It's offers like this where we Linux users can show we're a growing market, and we deserve games, too. I bought WoG during its previous name-your-price sale. It was good enough that I took the Humble Bundle plunge based on its inclusion, despite me knowing nothing about the other games offered here. I just figure they have to be good if they're next to WoG. The charity options really sweetened the deal. What's not to love here?

  • So much for consistency.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by VMaN ( 164134 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @03:45PM (#32090684) Homepage

    World of Goo: .deb
    Aquaria: .run
    Gish .tar.gz
    Lugaru HD: .bin
    Penumbra .sh

    Now that's just silly :D

  • Short review of Aquaria (Score:5, Informative)

    by twoallbeefpatties ( 615632 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @03:48PM (#32090708)
    It's a Metroid-like game set underwater with you playing as a sort of a mermaid. The world is fairly large - maybe a bit too large, even. Good mix of puzzle solving and action. The control style takes some getting used to, but that helps to add to the sense that you're not playing the same old platforming game. Some of the boss fights will make you want to throw a controller. The art design is seriously beautiful - it's 2D sprites for everything, but the overall direction of the graphics is really lovely, as well as the excellent music. I recommend it (though I haven't finished it yet - it really is a bit long.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Similarly, a review of Penumbra.

      Penumbra is a series with two titles and one expansion back, it's a survival-horror adventure, and takes a lot of cues from the Cthulu mythos and HP Lovecraft's writing (though has a rather unique story). Overture is fantastic - you need to get used to it though, so give it at least 30 minutes or an hour before just saying "pft!" There is very little focus on combat, and a lot more focus on stealth, avoidance, and problem solving. The story is brilliantly written and atmos

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by IICV ( 652597 )

      Aquaria confused me to no end; in the very beginning, you talk to someone - and then apparently your character has never talked to anyone? What? I had no idea what was going on; it seemed like for no real reason the main character suddenly decided to go exploring, despite having been content with life before that.

  • I wish more console games in the Xbox Live Marketplace, PSN, etc. would/could do charity stuff like this. A lot of us have went over to console gaming and just don't game on our PC's anymore. I would love to be able to participate, but so many things like this are PC-only--and I am NEVER going back to the "Gotta upgrade my video card...gotta upgrade my CPU...gotta get more memory...now I gotta upgrade my video card again..." mess I was in back in the 90's.

    • You only *need* to upgrade you PC hardware about as often as new consoles come out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
        That's true, providing you're okay with turning the sliders down for new games more and more each year. When you're a truly obsessive gamer, there is no way you're going to do that for very long. And every new game ups the ante a little more, until you find yourself almost buying a new rig every year. Not going back there, thanks.

        • You don't want to turn options down for a PC game so you're willing to settle for console which doesn't compare to current PC systems on launch and get even more behind year after year?

          Doesn't make any sense to me, but whatever floats your boat.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
            It may not make sense, but for me there is a sense with the console that I'm getting the same experience as everyone else out there, that I'm not missing out on anything. With the PC, if I wasn't running a game at the highest settings, it felt like I was getting a sub-par experience. I knew that someone out there with a better rig was getting the best experience out of the game and I wasn't. It's real easy to fall into that kind of mentality in the PC world (I knew a *lot* of other guys who were pretty much

        • If you're satisfied with the console, you can be quite satisfied with PC gaming and dialing down the resolution and quality appropriately. Most major Xbox games don't even hit 720p (let alone 1080p) and often play at 30fps, so even though you have that nice 1080p monitor hooked to your PC, dial the resolution down in the game to get the same playability. Remember that every console is using outdated hardware in comparison to a current PC.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by kalirion ( 728907 )

      If your PC was built during the last 7 years, it shouldn't any trouble running Gish or World of Goo, or even Penumbra for that matter.

  • Why no plain "payment with CC" option?

    I haven't used PayPal account for quite sometime (they changed their status in Europe at least twice already; a major pita to reauthorize myself again after the years) and I do not think other options would let me buy the bundle from over here.

    • Re:PayPal/Amazon/Google CO (Score:4, Informative)

      by Killer Orca ( 1373645 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @03:58PM (#32090836)
      You can pay through paypal without an account there, they just process the order. All you do is select the paypal option then click the radio button that says "pay by credit card".

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by GumphMaster ( 772693 )
        ... and keeping hunting for the link on each successive page that will let you continue without creating a PayPal account. PayPal go to great lengths to coerce people into signing up for an account by making it seem compulsory and making these buttons the obvious ones.

  • I've seen plenty of these experiments; especially from musicians. What ends up happening is everyone pays jack squat for the application and the artists scratch their heads dumbfounded that all the fans, claiming they were sticking it to the man by pirating music, are now sticking it to the artists. That being said, I'll probably contribute even though I'm not interested in the product (as I have before) because I dreadfully want to see this work.

    • Average contribution $7.75

    • Re:Noble, but sad (Score:4, Interesting)

      by grnbrg ( 140964 ) <slashdot@ g r n b r g .org> on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @04:04PM (#32090906)

      Except that the totals currently show otherwise...

      - Total raised $55,481
      - Average contribution $7.74
      - Number of contributions 7169

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by joey ( 315 )

        Wow, it was under $1000 when I paid this morning.

        Also interesting that someone paid $500. And 3 others, >= $200.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Except that the totals currently show otherwise...

        - Total raised $55,481
        - Average contribution $7.74
        - Number of contributions 7169

        I only donate in geeky amounts. Here are some recommendations

        $1.87 (on a motherfucking cop) - rap geek
        $11.11 - binary geek
        $10.66 - european history geek
        $14.92 - american history geek
        $13.37 - computer geek
        $31.41 - math geek

      • Plus you can get some relatively cheap advertising for donating. For example I stopped by analogpixels.com to check out who this #2 contributor so far was....

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by eqreed ( 1108821 )

      Except that I wasn't planning on buying it at all. Now I'll buy it and pay something for it. Something > Nothing.

      I'd imagine that most people who wanted it would have already bought it by now. They're squeezing money out of people who wouldn't have bought it at the higher price.

      Although, I have a feeling that sales will plummet after this week.

      • I agree with this. $20 for just World of Goo seems too much to me. I played the demo and the depth is limited compared to many non-indie games. I paid a reasonable amount in my opinion for the collection which is more than they would have had otherwise. It is not unusual for games to drop massively in price, I personally don't buy new PC games because they are too expensive for me. If you find a steam sale you can pick up great games (e.g. Civ4 and Empire Total War) for fairly cheap (~£7) just a

    • If this was a music album, I'd pay 1 cent first, listen to it, and *then* pay an appropriate price. That's how it should be, imho. But my payment average would be half of the reality.

      Sales like these should give you an option to pay after *or* pay something before but be able to pay more afterwards without counting as a second sale.

    • What the hell? Do you have any proof for the “plenty of experiments” you are supposed to have seen? (Especially, how have you seen what everybody paid? Unless you are close friends with them...)
      I think you’re just trolltalking out of your ass.

      I know that at least Nine Inch Nails and Moby had big successes with that, and actually made more money that way. And lowering prices on Steam to 25% of the old price also made them more money.

      Being nice to your clients can mean that they are nice to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

      Yeah, were really screwing them with the mere $95k they made in the first day. How ever could someone survive on more than $13k a day.

  • Licensing Disconnect (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kainewynd2 ( 821530 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @04:32PM (#32091248)
    From the website:

    We don't use DRM. When you buy these games, they are yours. Feel free to play them without an internet connection, back them up, and install them on all of your Macs and PCs freely.

    Now, from the EULA:

    1.1 License Grant. 2D BOY hereby grants to you a non-exclusive license to use a single copy of the object code version of the Game for your personal, non-commercial home entertainment use on one personal computer or other compatible electronic device. You may sell or transfer your copy of the Game to another person along with, and subject to, your rights under this EULA, only if you do not retain any copies.

    Emphasis is mine. It looks like Marketing might want to talk to Legal here...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      IANAL, but I feel that you can install it on as many machin as you want provided you only use a single one at a time.

  • Good Jerb Slashdot editors

  • Missing option: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Madsy ( 1049678 ) <mads@mechCOWcore.net minus herbivore> on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @04:54PM (#32091482) Homepage Journal

    I abstain from buying because I don't think I can pay enough for so many games in good conscience. The games are decent, and the 20 USD I can afford now wouldn't do the games justice.
    The whole "experiment" is useless without this option, in my opinion. They're going to see a bunch of people paying 1 cent going to EFF and conclude "what a bunch of cheapskates", when there is a good amount of people who either could buy later (after the offer limit), or refuse to buy that many games hands-down, because they actually *value* those games at 70-80 USD and think it's too much money to spend.

    These kind of people won't show up in the statistics.

  • yeah, I'm a bit of a cheapskate, but I'm on a gaming & fun budget each month, so I gotta watch things. Gotta save some money for Zeevex Cards for diamonds for Runs of Magic. :-)

  • just went over 80.000 $ (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pwilli ( 1102893 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2010 @05:47PM (#32092016)
    Seems the experiment runs very well. The slashvertisment surely helped to spread the word.

    Biggest problem for such Indie-Developers is imho not the intentional lack of DRM and the resulting unlicensed copying of the games, but the lack of media coverage. As the numbers show, there are enough people out there who are willing to pay for games, even if they could get them for free. And I was one of them.

    btw. while I typed this, the counter went over 84.000 $. I wonder how much they'll collect over the remaining 6 days.

  • Pay $100 or more (Score:3, Informative)

    by supersloshy ( 1273442 ) on Wednesday May 05, 2010 @10:57AM (#32099464)

    If you pay $100 or more (split any way you like), you get a complimentary EFF Pioneer Level Membership.
    Source [wolfire.com].

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