And the beat the average is usually around $5, how does that stop being a good deal? Especially when you’re usually getting sound tracks etc tossed in for good measure. I’m usually the king of anal about getting the best deal for my money, but come on. Even counting the bundle as you know, a bundle, it’s still usually an amazing deal for what you pay. And if there is just that one game you want, then maybe you should just wait for a Steam sale instead.
Re: the security, I do understand how 0auth works. Two things tho, they don’t even highlight that they are using it and will have no access to your account, and secondly it still leaves humble with a permanent permission to make modifications to your account, which made me believe that they were not using it and instead had some other wonky solution. I stand by my complaints for now.
The only difference now between this and most of their bundles is that they’re using OAuth to hand over your shit, where previously they would just give you one steam key that had all your shit in it (with a second key for the beat the average price)
It was out of the ordinary when a bundle had separated keys.
As it stands I’m less likely to than I was before. You can say it’s always been against their terms, but this has been happening for three years. It’s not like they didn’t know it was going on, or that there haven’t been solutions until now. They’ve even listened to feedback in the past and switched back to multiple keys from a single key. So, a sudden change from implicit acceptance to such a strict system is… odd.
Can you still just give people raw links to the humble bundle download page for your purchase without any form of password etc?
I’m not sure Pod. I had planned to buy my nephews a gift of this bundle but I’m out now. There is a “Is this a gift” check box so I’m assuming yes…
Which kind of defeats it since the bad guys will still stock up on the cheap bundle and sell those off after the deal is closed, right? Just not the BTA version.
Lovely to see everyone’s true nature revealed, whining and complaining about charity bundles…oh, has everyone forgotten about that already?
Donating proceeds to charity is not an excuse for not being transparent with your customers.
In addition, the default allocation of proceeds is 20% to charity. The remaining 80% serve commercial interests.
Gets 10 games for 6 dollars. Outraged! he can’t give half of them away.
Oh internet.
I always set it to 100% developer, so I can whine away, surely? :)
QFT. I mean, really, folks? The “beat the average” price is rarely more than seven or eight dollars, and when the hell are you going to get a sale that good anyways? (Sometimes–sometimes–I can get a $20 title for 75% off, but not as frequently as the bundle comes around.)
Also, just put the slider all the way to charity!
We need one of those GIFs of the woman softly crying into her hand with the caption “Can’t give away 3 of the 6 games I just paid $1 for, feeling so taken advantage of.”
While I completely understand where Kadath and Rachel are coming from with their arguement, it really only holds water if Humble Bundle continuously claims that you get multiple keys or that authetication is not required. It’s my understanding that this Team 17 bundle is the first time they’ve tried the authentication process, so it’s a beta of sorts for them. Now they’ve got people jumping down their throats screaming about false advertising and fraud because some of the initial wording on the sales page was vague. Give me a break.
Am I bummed that I won’t be able to give keys away to friends? Sure. With Humble Bundle that’s been the case for awhile now though, as they usually lump all of a tiers games into a single key. Granted in the past I’ve given the base key away and only used the premium key (because I owned or was uninterested in the base games), and I think there was that one EA sale where everything had separate keys to both Steam and Origins, which was fantastic for game sharing, but given the pleathora of games I’ve purchased for a few bucks total I think I can get over not being able to share the wealth from here on out.
What worries me a little is the authentication process. Steam being pretty much my digital bookcase full of games for the past half-decade, I am incredibly wary of giving anyone or anything any sort of access to my account. Even if it can’t login as me, I still don’t like the thought of someone other than Valve and myself being able to make any changes to the nature of my Steam account. I’ll likely hold off on any Humble Bundle buying until they’ve gone through several bundles worth of transactions and I’m assured that nothing odd could happen when adding games to my account.
On the subject of bundle speculation, while I personally find it distasteful to take advantage of charity bundle sales to stock up on cheap codes then resell them through forums or Ebay later on, Rachel makes a valid point when she says that a code is a one-and-done commodity and it doesn’t really matter who redeems it when or how they aquired it. The code is sold during the sale, generating the income for the charity and the merchant, and if it’s resold instead of being redeemed I don’t see it being much different than finding 3 copies of Diablo III in a bargin bin at Best Buy for $5 each and reselling them on Ebay for $20 a pop. The way to prevent massive exploitation of this is to cap sales of bundles to specific accounts at 2 or 3.
They’ve done that (it’s 4). People are getting around it somehow. The mass $1 purchasers are probably also costing Humble Bundle ~a quarter each for transaction fees unless they change the sliders.
I hope this account authentication/game giving is something other companies can use in the future.
“Hackers Stole 30,000 Blackwell Deception Steam keys”
http://www.reddoorbluekey.com/features/interviews/hackers-stole-30000-blackwell-deception-steam-keys-dave-gilbert-responds/
Christ. That’s just stupid. For one thing, the black market for Blackwell Deception can’t be that large, the game isn’t that expensive to begin with and is only going to appeal to a niche segment. Now with 30,000 keys floating around I can’t imagine the sellers would even be able to sell them for more than a buck each if that. I feel terrible for the developer, what a huge hassle to endure because they tried to do something good for the community on Halloween.
I can’t believe no one has done anything for me lately.
Yeah well said. This is why I try to make games aimed at older gamers who are less looking for games for a pittance. As a guy making games, if you are going to bitch about the terms of a PAY WHAT YOU WANT bundle, then frankly, you are dead to me as a customer.
I swear if game developers paid gamers $100 a minute to play their games, gamers would bitch about it somehow. At some point, the people running games companies just stop listening to the whining.
If I want extra copies of the games in the bundle (to give away) then I usually just buy extra bundles. Of course, I don’t necessarily feel compelled to beat the average for extra copies.
Damn it cliffski, the $3000 you gave me for playing your game for 30 minutes is all in hundred dollar bills. How am I supposed to spend these, nobody will break them for me at the register. THEY’RE USELESS!!! Never playing your games again.
#DeadToMe
Pretty frequently, actually, when compared to the portion of the bundle I’m actually getting for the first time. If I actually got unique keys for every game (which, as I said previously, is the practice for literally every other major bundle operation), then yes, they’d be a consistently excellent value.
Really?
I think every Humble Bundle I’ve purchased had separate keys for each game. I think I’ve mostly (or only?) purchased the mobile/android bundles, so maybe that’s where the discrepancy comes from, but I don’t remember seeing any bundles where I had a single key for all of the games.
As to the larger debate:
I understand the backlash from people arguing that a Humble Bundle is often a good deal even if it’s only 1-2 games (and I often ignore 50-80% of the games in the bundles, never bothering to download or activate them on Steam because they have low appeal and I assume that saves HB some money).
…But if people already own most of the bundled games, I don’t really see why it’s a loss (for the HB or developers) if people give the extra keys to a friend. (As Rachel Brown said, the Steam keys are single-use only so it’s always a 1:1 transaction. Someone pays for 5 games and Steam/HB provides access to the 5 games).
So anyway, I don’t care about this particular bundle and I’m assuming that HB will (when available) continue to provide games DRM-free. However, I think that perception matters a lot with HB because, like GoG, they’ve wrapped themselves in the mantle of Indie-Gamer-Digital-Justice. They seem to be ‘humble’ and ‘underdogs’ and supporters of the ‘DRM-free revolution’, so I’m willing to buy stuff on HB or GoG that I wouldn’t bother with on Steam or Amazon (and I like Steam/Amazon) because I’ve heard that developers get more money that way.
But there’s a catch to that arrangement. When companies start offering games DRM-free, they’re saying: “We’re foregoing DRM and treating you, the customers, like responsible and respectful adults. We’re trusting you not to take advantage of us, and we’re hoping that you’ll reward our respect with continued business”. This thread is about a Steam-only sale, but the heart of the issue seems the same.
Giving out individual keys is the (closer to) DRM-free approach. It gives customers more flexibility and lets them choose, if they wish, to share* their games as they see fit. With that (closer to) DRM free approach, they’re giving their customers a bit more value and (arguably) more respect and some of their customers may appreciate that enough to give HB larger and/or more frequent sales.
*I think the argument about HB’s terms is mostly irrelevant. I was certainly never aware of it, but I have tried to act in good faith and not distribute my keys because I wanted HB to thrive. And, because HB is often so cheap, I frequently buy extra bundles as gifts for people that don’t really want/need them. However, I have sometimes shared my DRM-free games with my g/f from time to time. I view that as acting in good faith, and really part of the pro-DRM-free social contract, because those are sales that would never have occurred otherwise and, in the rare case where she plays and enjoys the game, I’m happy to buy a second copy to support the dev.