Humble Bundle 2: 5 great games, no DRM, pay what you want

[nsane.forums]

The first Humble Bundle was a monster success, with over 100,000 people donating over $1 million in total to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Child's Play, and of course the developers behind the games themselves. The second bundle is now live, containing five great games: Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos, and Revenge of the Titans. You pay what you want, decide where your money goes, each game is DRM-free, and the games work on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Read on for thoughts on what the team learned from the first bundle, and what the sales of the bundle says about modern gamers.

So, what's changed?

So why is this such a special bundle? "Braid is making its Linux debut in the bundle, as is Cortex Command, which is timing a large game update with the launch," Wolfire Game's John Graham told Ars. "Revenge of the Titans is doing something very crazy: they are launching their game that they have been working on for quite some time directly into the bundle."

Just for fun, the stats on the official page are now updated in real time; you can keep your browser open and watch how much money is being raised as it happens, and take a look at the largest contributors. The are also trying distribution via BitTorrent.

Jeffery Rosen, the cofounder of Wolfire Games, ticked off the lessons learned from the first bundle. "We learned that piracy is inevitable—even when you let people literally give a penny to charity for DRM-free games, large percentages of people will still pirate the bundle," he said. "We learned that open source software is still commercially viable. After open sourcing a number of games in the bundle, none of our sales were negatively affected."

This is a lesson we've heard from other people in the industry: focus on the positive, and work on giving players the best experience possible. "The moral of the story for me is that there are many, many people who are good and honest," Rosen explained. "If you focus on making them happy, they will reward you. Don't worry about making life difficult for people who aren't going to support you anyways."

By the time you read this article, this image will be awesomely out of date

The most surprising revelation is the power of Linux; nearly a quarter of the bundle's revenue came from Linux gamers.

Our official recommendation: buy some games, support great causes, and keep an eye on how much money is raised on the official page. This is a wonderful chance to support indie gaming, Child's Play, and the EFF all in one go, while giving the finger to companies who don't think you can remain profitable without invasive DRM. The Humble Bundle is one of my favorite ways to donate to Child's Play, and it's wonderful that it's growing and continuing

View: Original Article

[MrVoice]

This is a great story. I hope that the bigtime studios in the gaming industry read this and take notes.

[avmad]

Great thanks. Got 1 as a gift, and 1 for me of course :dance2: I missed the 1st bundle so glad to see this one.