The Humble Bundle Is an Evil Conspiracy - ForceTime | Video Game News, Reviews, Game Trailers

ForceTime: The Humble Bundle Is an Evil Conspiracy

Indie Conspirators

The Humble Bundle, a bundle of games that basically lets you pay whatever you want to support charity, is an evil conspiracy. There, I finally said it. Whenever a new Humble Bundle comes out, I watch the video and I am predictably like “Hell yeah! I love the Humble Bundle! I can’t wait to buy it!” And then I scroll down to those graphs to see what other people are paying, and I see the average price is always around five dollars or something. The Linux guys always pay more than the Mac folks who always pay more than the Windows people. That’s fine. But then I go to pay for it and, when I look at the sliding scales, the guilt trip starts.

“I’m paying them twenty-five dollars? Okay, how does that breakdown? The developers? Yeah, better give those guys some money.” Then the scale illustrating the ratio of money to developers:charity tips away from the children and I’m like “Oh, wait, no, you poor children, I’m sorry I’ll give you more money, I promise!” But then the developer’s “Humble Tip” goes down and I’m like, “No, dammit, no, I’m sorry, Humble guys! Please don’t judge me! The EFF? I don’t even know who they are and I feel bad for not giving them more money!”

I never feel like they’re actually happy with me. Like someone somewhere is going to look at my purchase and be like “Look at this! This Sebastian Force only gave us $5.50! He must hate children! Let’s go to his house and beat him with a flaming Dreamcast controller for being a horrible person.”

We Will Find You.

This never stops, either! I’m never happy with what I give to everyone, but I especially feel bad for whoever gets the least amount of money. I’m basically telling them, “Sorry, but you’re not important enough to give more than two dollars to. I spend more money on a Three Musketeers bar and a ginger ale than I gave your entire company for the purchase of six games. And that’s if you’re giving twenty-five dollars! Try giving the average of $4.51 and see what those poor kids think of you. They’re probably cursing your name in their sleep right now, and undoubtedly at least some are making voodoo dolls to make you run outside naked, screaming, with a shovel in one hand and banging your head into a Kinect with the other. This is what I think about when I donate to the Humble Bundle.

My conclusion is, the Humble Bundles are evil conspiracies designed to make you give up your entire paycheck just so that you feel content with yourself. And I will, Humble Bundle, because you deserve it more than anyone else.

Humble Indie Bundle 3 is coming to a PC (or Mac, or Linux box) near you! (bnbgaming.com)

http://gamenacho.com/ Nigel

You’re absolutely right it is an evil conspiracy!

I get the same sort of “guilt” whenever I purchase a Humble Bundle pack. It’s hard to balance who should get what amount of money.

Anyways very good article I enjoyed the spin you took on it!
Naeddyr

I’ve been on a David Mitchell youtube binge recently and I read this in his voice.

Personally, I gave everything to the devs.
Jahn

While I can’t speak on behalf of anyone else, as an indie game dev. I don’t honestly expect to make much (if any) profit. It’s far more important to me that people are playing and enjoying my games, and if I can help out a couple awesome causes while doing it so much the better.

That said, judging from the lack of DRM I’d say it’s safe to assume the developers partaking in the Humble Bundle agree with me on that front. It’s not really about how much you pay, the fact that you’re paying at all tells us we must be doing something right. Enjoy your games, and thanks for helping to support our passions. ~
http://bnbgaming.com Martin Watts

Hey Jahn, out of curiosity, do you have any indie projects currently underway? If so, be sure to get in formal contact with us and we’ll happily provide news stories for you
win-win

That’s why I don’t give anything at all. You can’t feel bad if everyone gets an equal share!
etho

I generally give 50% to Childs Play, 25% to the devs and split the rest between EFF and the tip. I sleep alright at night.
dann

In my culture, the health system should not work on charity, it should work on taxes. What ChildPlay is doing is essential and necessary for children (and for gamers, by fighting stupid criticism of video games, using their own “do it for the children” populist weapon), therefore I will fight for a better health system including entertainment for the patients (mental health is very important, even when treating “physical” health problems) through the tax system. Charity is too volatile for something as important as health.

Giving 5 dollars to ChildPlay and voting for someone cutting 10 dollars (or more…) from the health system is not really helping “the childrenz”, imho.

For the first Humble Indie Bundle, it was the 75% devs, 25% EFF.

Then it was 50% devs, 25% EFF, 25% Humble.

EFF is defending our rights and freedom regarding the IT world (copyright, hardware, software, Internet, etc), they’re doing an extremely difficult job, and they haven’t given up yet, they our support. And since I don’t live in the US I can’t send donations easily, so HIB is a great way of participating to that effort.

Humble Bundle (Wolfire devs + hired guns now employees) took the risk and still pushing for more “pay-what-you-want” sales, which is something really needed, not only in indie video games but also in the entire human economic interactions.

And, excuse me, but after reading their blog posts regarding piracy, and especially how they are reacting to it, how they analyze it, (and what they did for the people who couldn’t pay for Bundles due to local limitations…), you really want these guys to continue doing that kind of projects. This is the first time I read something from devs regarding piracy that was not dumb at all, something that was deeper and more intelligent than my view of piracy : they raised very good questions, I learned a lot by reading their papers and comments.

=> When a small dev company explains that, even with more pirated downloads from the official website than actual download from legit sales (even with a pay-what-you-want offer ! 1 cent price IS possible), which mean they paid for the bandwidth used by pirates, they still want to do more projects like this because they’re working for the gamers (and gamers want great games to play, not DRM), just asking the pirates to use torrents like everyone else so the piracy won’t turn into server cost. In such case, you shed a gamer’s tear of joy, of pure emotion.

…

Regarding how much you pay, this is quite easy : if you’re broke/student/scholar, you can aim for a $15-to-$20, if you really like the games $20-$30, then if you have some money available, sitting there, dropping $50 for the heck of it is a good choice (better choice : get 1 or 2 additional bundles as gift, with the total cost being $50, and give the bundles to friends).

You just need to estimate your financial capacity and how interesting is the Bundle for you (for me, HIB 1 was excellent, HIB 2 was good, H-Frozenbyte-B was okay, HIB3 was good, H-Frozensynapse-B was okay-good). Your financial capacity determines your price range, while your interest in the bundle determines if you’re going for the higher/average/lower price.