Humble Bundle key redemption is awesome again (mostly) but the games are kinda meh

This is going to happen more and more. We’re getting tiers of games, where the lowest rung is ‘willing to be bundled in a fanatical/indiegala bundle’. Normal humble bundles have become very rare and don’t seem to have that much value anymore. The humble monthly is the new ‘big’ bundle, and games that are willing to be in it will often also agree to be on gamepass, or be given away by twitch and epic. Gamepass does have that influx of games that signed exclusivity deals with epic but want another income stream, so that’s an even higher tier. So we have

  1. Epic exclusives on gamepass.
  2. Games relying on actual sales.
  3. Gamepass/humble monthly/twitch prime/epic freebies.
  4. Fanatical
  5. Indiegala (mostly trash)

Yeah that bit me the other day, I wanted to use Cheat Engine in a game and I couldn’t, it wouldn’t see the process.

As a fan of Microsoft’s GamePass early on I have come to the conclusion that the ‘going-away-part’ is a huge negative. They go away just too fast. One GamePass too many games… Therefore I consider it a mere demo platform or a way to play an AAA/exclusive title on release for a cheap resub.

The subscription model isn’t as fitting for games as it is for music or movies/tv shows since time is a more significant factor. Even if I like to own my music Spotify makes sense for daily use. I can listen to enough songs a week to enjoy the borrowed content wholeheartedly. But the subscription model for games just means the luxury of having a lot of demos. I cannot really make use of it since there are too many titles requesting too much time. And… Steam and EGS do basically have demos as well. With games you need to be more determined. That’s undermining the sub-model I think.

Game pass has its problems but it is indisputably a great value. It just isn’t for me, I want to own my games. But if I was a new gamer, or someone buying an Xbox for the first time, it would be just amazing.

I’ve recently dropped the Xbox part since my One S is a paperweight atm so at about US$4 per month is still worth it to demo games and particularly to play games that would be personally “one and done” like Outer Worlds which I enjoyed, but have no desire to replay so no need to own. Also to avoid buying MSoft titles that I assume will stay on the platform long term like State of Decay 2, Halo Wars and the AOE definitive editions, all of which I would likely buy otherwise.

Planetfall & Void Bastards make this a difficult choice. Already have Railway Empires and BSG Deadlock. Sigma Theory looks interesting too.

Wow what a bundle, i think it’s one of the best they’ve done since the start.

I’m one of those people who don’t have any of the 4 headliner games and wanted to play all of them. Such value!

If anyone else is in a similar situation, I noticed I already had Earthlock from a previous Twitch / Amazon Prime giveaway.

So, apparently my steam library has only increased via Humble Bundles in the past year. Steam is now telling me that since it’s been more than a year since I’ve made a purchase I"m no longer allowed to sell steam cards/inventory items in the marketplace lol.

So jealous!

I want this message!

I went in this month… twice. I have subscriptions on two different accounts. I snagged Railway Empire. Which I have on Xbox but found to be too hard to play with the controller. The rest I distributed to my wife and kids. Glad to see AoW Planetfall since it has multiplayer and my wife, oldest son, and I can all play together. He likes RTSes as well so BSG is worth checking out. My middle son is a platformer fan so he grabbed the swinging one, the not-Megaman platformer, and Beat Shooty thing. My youngest was mildly interested in Void Bastards but the M rating waved him off. He did get Beat shooty thing too.

This bundle had something for everyone here.

Excellent month for me, having nothing at all. Had a few games of Planetfall and Void Bastards on GamePass but cancelled that service, so this bundle is great. Always wanted to try Deadlock too. Makes a change as I’ve been pausing for the last three-four months.

This is probably because Steambucks are a bit of an accounting hassle. It’s deferred revenue, since from an accounting perspective you’ve paid for something but Valve still hasn’t delivered the service. So they have to be considered liabilities on the books. The normal way companies deal with this is to deactivate accounts after a long period of inactivity, which for some reason lets them stop treating it as a liability even if they allow reactivating the account.

But I guess that doesn’t work for Steam’s case, since there are a lot of people with active accounts who just get their games from elsewhere. So the best they can do is try to stop these accounts from accruing Steambucks and making the problem worse.

(I wonder if you could just buy a single $0.05 trading card to unlock the ability to sell again).

So which 2 games should I skip? Nothing strikes me as complete rubbish or primarily multiplayer.

I skipped Yuppie Psycho and Verlet Swing as the least appealing to me, but it’s all down to personal preference.

Yuppie Psycho is pretty darn great if you like horror games. If you don’t, well. It’s horror. But it’s not one of those cookie cutter “explore a dark place and get jump-scared” things that are churned out to be fodder for face-camming Youtubers. It’s weeeeeird.

Indeed.

I kinda mistakenly got this month’s subscription when I decided to up my plan from basic to premium but wasn’t paying attention to the fact that they’d charge for this month immediately (although they clearly said that). Whoops! Guess I added 9 to my backlog minus Planetfall which I already had. None of the games were on my radar, but because y’all seem so enthused by them, I suppose it can’t be that bad.

Wow. Void Bastards is not just a novelty nostalgia shooter. I already know this is not going to be enough content for me at the pace I’m flying through it. BIG highlight for this month, though that’s probably not news to anyone but me.

Oh wow, there they go with that tempting offer again. I thought I was finally rid of the Humble Monthly temptation under the new payment scheme.