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Comment by lambda | Hacker News Reader

This seems to be completely against the spirit of the Humble Bundles. They are normally creative games from independent publishers, available cross platform and DRM free. These are some generic mass-market games from a failing major publisher, available only on Windows, and delivered via Steam rather than DRM-free.

The excessive numbers of "Humble X Bundles" that have been coming out recently have been kind of killing my interest in them. When it was an occasional thing with some really good games in the bundle, and I was able to support cross-platform DRM-free game development, I would buy pretty much every one, even if I didn't play many of the games. Now that they've diluted the brand so much, I'm a lot less likely to look when they announce a new bundle.

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>Windows-only

>Steam-only

>not DRM-free

Seriously, what is this... The fun was cross-platformness (GNU/Linux and Mac OS X support). This is just not typical "Humble Bundle".

I wouldn't mind less humble bundles (a couple a year), but good and cross-platform and a load of them, instead of Windows & Steam-only like this.

Of course it’s a typical Humble Bundle. There were goddamn Android bundles in the past. No one complained. But now suddenly everyone. I do not get it.

The point of Humble Bundles is to make a bunch of cool games available for however much money you want to pay. Sometimes those games are cross-plattform, sometimes not. That’s it.

But the Android ones also worked on Linux, OSX and Windows. This is just Windows.

I don't care about cross-platform, but I feel abandoning DRM-free is really moving away from the original concept.

The Android bundles were just bundles that included Android versions of the games. They were still cross-platform and DRM-free (you can use their app, or download the .apk and put it on your device any way you choose)

The thing is, people have certain expectations of a Humble Bundle now; that's what it means to have a strong brand.

It's fine that they are doing new things -- I don't mind the Amnesia Fortnight stuff at all, in part because it's a pretty cool concept, but probably also because they're not calling it a Humble Bundle.

It's not just this one that I mind. The "Humble Android Bundle", "Humble Ebook Bundle", and so on are also diluting the brand.

But this one goes against some of the basic tenets of the Humble Bundle series; namely, the DRM-free, cross-platform nature. One of the reasons I support them is that I support choice. I want to have choice in what platform I run. I want to have choice in what machines I run my games on. DRM and single-platform games mean that I don't have that choice.

All I'm saying is that in the past, I've bought Humble Bundles and never even played a single game, just because I supported the idea so much. Now they've violated some of their core principles; they are still "pay what you want" and allow supporting charities, but they are selling games that I am morally opposed to. I'm better off just giving my money to the charities directly.

It's a cliche thing to say, but hey, you don't have to participate.

If you truly support Humble Bundle and what they do, then you would support them in this endeavor as well -- you are giving them some tip as well (and charities if that's your thing). Does anyone really think that since they are doing this with THQ they are going to simply stop supporting the indie community?

THQ made some bad decisions, and they are desperate. This is a pretty clever move for them, and one can only hope a kick in the butt to pay more attention to what gamers are looking for.

Yeah if this THQ bundle earns them a lot of money, maybe they do not need to work their ass off to promote indie titles from now on, and simply rely on big AAA titles sales once and then. Of course it would be stupid for them to do so (killing their brand) but it seems that they would be well off financially.

I thought the point of humble bundles was supporting charities, not giving away games for cheap.

Why can't it be both?

By letting you, the purchaser, decide where your dollars go, the point of a Humble /.?*/ Bundle is exactly what you make of it.

Humble Bundle is investor-backed and for-profit, so I don't really find their "commercialization" surprising.

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