Humble THQ bundle

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zzwerty
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Humble THQ bundle

Post by zzwerty » Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:54 am

I am very annoyed at humble bundle.
Originally, their song preached: [insert number] indie games,
Cross platform
DRM free,
Pay what you want
and help charity.
With this bundle, the only item left is the last two. But I still wouldn't mind having the games. You can't pay $0.01, because you only get the soundtracks, so I payed, you guessed it, 1.01! Have a spare dollar, do the same!

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Glabbit
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by Glabbit » Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:03 am

In fact, I am opting not to get this bundle at all, since not only am I mildly annoyed at the, indeed, butchering of the original song's key points, but I'm also not very interested in shooters, and as such the only bundle item left that interests me is in fact the one you have to beat the average for.
Even that average amount I don't want to grant them because
  • a) I dislike the fact that they haven't even bothered to show any porting initiative,
    b) Though I enjoyed Saint's Row II, I am a bit wary of its sequel,
    and c), The recent Steam Sale has had my budget butchered enough for the time being.
But as such, I don't mind that much. Though I am rather worried that this will set precedent for more non-cross platform DRM things creeping along. I wouldn't be happy with that.

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adwuga
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by adwuga » Fri Nov 30, 2012 8:57 am

THQ is going out of business, this was a way to help them out. That said, I agree with you guys.

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Assaultman67
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by Assaultman67 » Fri Nov 30, 2012 1:30 pm

THQ is selling their company, this is just a way to keep them a float until they sell and to generate hype around the "THQ" name so they can artificially inflate the worth of the company.

I know quite a few people who shorted the shit out of them the past few months.

That being said, "HumbleBundle,Inc." has made a crapload from these promotions.

Enough so that I'm sure they didn't mind bending their original rule.

lets say Humblebundle gets 10% of all the cash being thrown around here. That's is $236,998 for basically just hosting a server, dealing with THQ, and utilizing an already existing store infrastructure.

This is a shocker but ... Wolfire is a company. Companies tend to like profit.

But seriously, I know a few guys at THQ who were some pretty cool dudes really involved in the RF community for years. So much so that a lot of members were on a first name basis. I remember days when the RF tracking server would go down and we would just email a guy and tell him "Hey, could you restart the tracking server?" and he would do it. So please don't think of THQ as a completely faceless corporation. There will be people affected by this.

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Ragdollmaster
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by Ragdollmaster » Fri Nov 30, 2012 5:05 pm

zzwerty wrote: I am very annoyed at humble bundle.
Originally, their song preached: [insert number] indie games,
Cross platform
DRM free,
Pay what you want
and help charity.
You're thinking of the Humble Indie Bundle. This is the Humble THQ Bundle. THQ are a great bunch of people and they've been doing not so well lately and are in need of money. I actually sent all of my massive $10 donation to the devs versus splitting it.

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Assaultman67
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by Assaultman67 » Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:55 pm

Ragdollmaster wrote:
zzwerty wrote: I am very annoyed at humble bundle.
Originally, their song preached: [insert number] indie games,
Cross platform
DRM free,
Pay what you want
and help charity.
You're thinking of the Humble Indie Bundle. This is the Humble THQ Bundle. THQ are a great bunch of people and they've been doing not so well lately and are in need of money. I actually sent all of my massive $10 donation to the devs versus splitting it.
Calling everyone at THQ a developer isn't exactly accurate ...

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underthedeep
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by underthedeep » Fri Nov 30, 2012 9:08 pm

whats that? cheap games? charity? for the price of a cheese burger?!

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Ragdollmaster
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by Ragdollmaster » Fri Nov 30, 2012 9:23 pm

"Devs" referring to the development company, in this case THQ.

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zzwerty
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by zzwerty » Fri Nov 30, 2012 10:25 pm

Ragdollmaster wrote:You're thinking of the Humble Indie Bundle. This is the Humble THQ Bundle. THQ are a great bunch of people and they've been doing not so well lately and are in need of money. I actually sent all of my massive $10 donation to the devs versus splitting it.
It's still a humble bundle. Something like Amnesia Fortnight (A good idea even without mac/linux ports) doesn't really count as it's a seperate product, and the only connection is that they used humble bundle's store layout as a way of buying it.
The Humble Frozenbyte Bundle, for example, still stuck to each of those messages. Why is humble THQ bundle any different?

I also only really got it for Darksiders, as the other games don't interest me in the slightest.

This is the time when the phrase "Wake up Jeff!" is much needed.

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Count Roland
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by Count Roland » Sat Dec 01, 2012 1:15 am

maybe because each time they've been dealing with different people and thq just happened to want to negotiate? in any case I really don't think it matters that much.

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adwuga
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by adwuga » Sat Dec 01, 2012 1:54 am

If you had a chance to make a good few hundred thousand dollars in 2 weeks for very little work, while helping a relatively good game development company stay afloat(or maybe just inflate their value), while only slightly pissing off some people you've never met, what would you do? Humble Bundle has had corporate sponsors for a while now, so they aren't "selling out" any more than before. I do agree that it should have been cross platform, but one doesn't often get an opportunity like this, and THQ didn't have the resources to port it, so I can understand why Jeff let it be anyways. After all, it's been two days and it's already almost the most successful bundle yet.

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Korban3
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by Korban3 » Sat Dec 01, 2012 2:42 am

I tweeted about this :D
https://twitter.com/WingedPumaGames/sta ... 8534408192:
"Wow, folks really bitching about @humble doing the THQ bundle? The money is mostly for charity, guys. Get off you indie high-horses."

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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by David » Sat Dec 01, 2012 2:46 am

Wolfire is separate from the Humble Bundle (Aubrey and I have no stake in it), and I don't have any inside knowledge about how the THQ bundle happened. However, I do support their decision to run it. Here are the pros and cons as I see it.

Pros:
Helps charity
Helps people with less money afford a bunch of big games for the holidays
Helps fund the Humble Store and other indie services
Expands the audience for future indie bundles
Could help THQ out of a rough spot
Helps prove that pay-what-you-want can work with big-budget games

Cons:
This particular bundle is Windows-only and has Steam DRM

It would have been ideal to get all the games ported to Mac and Linux and DRM-free, but there are major technical obstacles: these games use dozens of large Windows-only middleware packages, and were created with Steam integration in mind, so making a non-Steam Linux version of every single game would be a long and expensive process. This is why Overgrowth uses no closed-source middleware -- it makes it almost impossible to port to new platforms. It becomes more of a biz-dev problem than a technical one. You have to convince every single middleware developer to port it themselves, or give you source code access so you can do it in-house.

Also, this bundle doesn't replace any indie bundle, it is purely an addition to the bundle schedule. If there were no THQ bundle, there would be no extra money for charity, no major mainstream news event, no exciting new experiment. Given that it was impossible to get the THQ bundle cross-platform and DRM-free, should Humble Bundle have just dropped it and walked away? "Sorry, THQ. Sorry, Red Cross. Sorry, sick children, Sorry, poor gamers. We just can't budge on the Linux thing."

I'm sure it was a hard decision to make an exception to two of the founding principles of the bundle, and alienate some of the original bundle supporters, but it would have been a mistake to pass up such an important opportunity.

What do you think would be a better way to handle bundles like this in the future? Should they always have an ultimatum of Linux and DRM-free or nothing, or is there some middle ground for quality games that can't be ported?

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Korban3
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by Korban3 » Sat Dec 01, 2012 4:31 am

Yeah, I love the HIB because it supports Linux and really helps the devs out, but it's also helping charity. Even though the THQ bundle has DRM and is Windows only, it still helps charity. Bottom line, it's doing good and clearly has earned the Humble Bundle some publicity, seeing the amount of money that has been thrown at it.
In the end, I completely support the THQ bundle. It's helping others and that's a big part of the Humble Bundle. When I saw this bundle, I was surprised that Jeff and John had landed AAA games for it. I was excited, I figured it was going to draw in tons of money. I couldn't believe that people were actually whining about it.

Incolta
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Re: Humble THQ bundle

Post by Incolta » Sat Dec 01, 2012 8:04 am

I think this also goes back to the idea of these 'innocent' indie dev. being squashed by giant looming triple-A companies like THQ. These are two separate bundles as hinted by the title, and I can't believe because they aren't a small developer that everyone is turning their back to this bundle. Are we forgetting THQ has published some of the best games: Company of Heroes, Red Faction, Titan Quest, Saints Row, just to name a few! THQ are obviously and have said they are running into financial difficulties, and need help, but then I guess people here don't want to see Company of Heroes 2.

Also the dick part of my brain wants to point out that THQ is more of a publisher than a developer :P

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