Pay-what-you-want indie game sale

I stumbled on this: The Humble Indie Bundle while reading ArsTechnica. It's a sale of a bundle of 5 indie games (World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru, Aquaria, and Penumbra Overture) for whatever you want to pay. The games work on practically any system out there (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) and you can pay through your choice of PayPal, Google Checkout and Amazon. The money is split between the developers and also some charity in whatever proportions you want. There is no DRM or anything of the sort.

I've only tried one of them so far (Aquaria) and it is surprisingly good. The graphics are 2D, but they are well drawn and the gameplay is both original and fun.

 

Haven't played any of them except for Penumbra Overture, and it was great. First person survival horror with puzzle solving using physics.

 

I'm tempted to buy just to support this type of sales. I'd rather they get it than stupid Ubi.

 

I will support this, it's a great initiative and idea, not only is it a great concept for gaming industry...

No DRM allowing me to own the game and do what I want with it...

But also to have my purchase do something good.

 

just supported it too

 

This is a great deal. I'm not sure about the other games because I haven't played them, but World of Goo is extremely fun. If you haven't played it, I recommend doing so.

Seeing this reminded me of the game, and I had to re-download it from when I bought it.

 

I may do the same. I'm sure that if I buy this on principle, I'll enjoy the games when I start playing them.

 

Ok, be honest, who here just paid $0.01 for 5 games?

 

Really? How did you find that out?

 

I'd pay minimum $30... I'd pay $100 if I could, but that's a little tight for me at the moment. I haven't bought yet but probably will soon.

 

Indie games go for about $5-10 normally depending on the complexity.

I got a indie game pack not too long ago that I think was $20 for 5 games.

 

I think I'd do $30 as well; $20 to the developers and $10 to the EFF (this sale allows you to donate a portion of the price as well).

 

Sounds interesting. I'll check it out later.

Thanks for the info.

 

meh, would you have bought them anyways? From an objective standpoint +0.01 is better than +0.00

 

I'll be sure to tell your boss that before you get your next paycheck.

 

No, it is not. Bandwidth and payment processing (Google/Paypal/Amazon as well the the credit cards themselves don't do this out of altruism) all cost money so I'm pretty sure that the cheapskates who absolutely must pay the minimum possible actually cost them something, but the average is around $8 so it seems that (fortunately) there aren't that many people like that in the world.

 

I got World of Goo last year and loved it, in fact it got me back into gaming after many years. The other games mostly sound great too, so I've just bought this bundle too.

All the games seem pretty light on resources, so they should run well on relatively recent laptops, even those without gaming-oriented GPUs - check the specs first if you have an older laptop.

I really like the fact that they all run on Linux and Windows (I use both) as well as Mac.

 

Actually it's worse, because of the costs of processing a payment through Paypal or whoever. Really people should pay $5 as a minimum otherwise the developers are losing money on the sale.

 

i paid for it, and then i gifted it to myself, but i'm not receiving any emails!

edit: the email took 5 minutes to arrive.
anyway, i've paid $80.

 

I'll never understand why people can't tell the difference between a lost sale and an opportunistic one.

It's simple business people: if you were never going to buy the game in the first place then any money you pay for it is a boon. This isn't 1999, there isn't a cost of packaging or shipping, and contrary to what some think, paypal does not operate that way (they take % of), nor is their bandwidth cost more than the least you could pay.

 

If anyone doesn't have a credit card or some way to get the deal I will be glad to donate (some pretty small amount) on your behalf and gift you the games.

And ya, they still benefit even if you just pay $1.

 

Interesting article from the developers on piracy and the game industry:

Wolfire programmer: poor PC ports, not piracy, hurt business

 

ok, just purchased, out of principle as much as anything... I support this, and absolutely positively HATE what Ubisoft has done.

Long live alternatives to dumb big company publishers.

EDIT: OK, games were instantly available, downloaded fast, and no keys, authorizations, phonecalls to Microsoft... this is how it should be!!

 

Great find.

I already own World of Goo, and this flexibility allows me to pay money and split it among the other 4 devs.

One question: how is the replay value of the other 4 games?

 

Great Idea, too bad i can't buy from Venezuela (no credit card...)... But i think is a great idead to support this developers who make games for gamers and not only for the money...

 

generally, it costs money for the company per transaction when doing a credit card purchase. this is why most businesses refuse payment (illegally - businesses are required to accept legal tender) via credit cards under a certain amount, because the business actually loses money for the purchase. the loss is calculated by the price of the good plus the cost of the good. electronic money transactions have FEES attached to them, thus, they increase the cost placed upon the company. usually, they don't put it on the end consumer as it makes the consumer feel they're paying more money than they should.

you ever noticed that ATM machines generally cost money to use?

and yeah, this isn't 1999, this is 2010 - life isn't free...

for those who purchase the game for a penny, have some shame.

 

I bought World of Goo for 5 bucks. In the meantime, I get the feeling I got more than that money's worth, so I might buy this pack for, say, 30$ and put some more money into WoG.

There's no doubt to me that these devs MUST be supported.

 

Good find, thanks for the tip!

I had World of Goo from a D2D sale over the holdiays, love it (and hate it at times!), I'm in for $20 for this little lot. Wifey can play WoG on her Macbook now.

 

Sadly, after some research on the games, it seems they aren't that appealing to me, except for World of Goo which I already own.

So, unfortunately, I won't be paying for this bundle, although I support the idea.

(Before you flame me: I haven't paid for modern games in quite a while, last purchase was Guild Wars, except for Fallout 3 which was returned because it sucks, and Enemy Engaged through GOG)

 

sweet deal 00.1 bucks for these 5 games i sure aint gonna miss this stuff man!

Who else got this sweet deal for 00.1?

 

Great concept here. Hopefully they'll include more "complex" games such as "Torchlight" and "Crayon Physics" and I would totally buy them.

 

I bit. Paid $5 total to split it evenly. This way I have the advantage of being a complete cheapskate while being a cheapskate. They make money even after the fee they get charged from paypal.