Humble Publishing
October 6, 2018 12:44 PM   Subscribe

In 2010, Wolfire Games decided to try "an experiment" in selling indie games online: they called it a 'Humble Bundle'. The initial bundle of games sold out, spawning several imitators and many more Humble Bundles. Now, Humble is their own store, competing with Steam and GoG— and they've just moved into publishing.
posted by Quackles (9 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
Humble is weird in that they do offer bare downloads of some games but most of what they sell is just keys for other services, like Steam or Uplay. Valve could always change their policy of basically giving unlimited free keys back to developers to sell elsewhere, although they've shown no sign of wanting to change this so far.

Indie publishing is becoming more and more of a thing because the average developer is never going to get their game noticed on Steam or even other platforms (Sony and Microsoft are pretty indifferent to indies at this point and Nintendo's store is rapidly becoming extremely crowded with limited curation) without outside help. If indie publishers can show a consistent track record of connecting players with the games they boost, it could work. There do seem to be an awful lot of them springing up, though.

Just a note: Humble is now owned by IGN... I'm not sure if this is connected or not.
posted by selfnoise at 1:30 PM on October 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


There are too many games already, please stop making more games

(I'm kidding but also... kinda not)
posted by BungaDunga at 5:33 PM on October 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


I've gotten some excellent book sets from HB, and I am pleased to have gotten things from them.
posted by mephron at 6:05 PM on October 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


Huh? Indie games thrive on Steam, and the Bundle success reinforces that.
posted by Brocktoon at 6:23 PM on October 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


Just a note: Humble is now owned by IGN... I'm not sure if this is connected or not.

Well, that's enough for me. I've watched the quality of a lot of my favorite sites and youtube channels take a nosedive since being swallowed up by their media empire.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 9:22 PM on October 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


Best thing about Humble Bundle is paying what you want and giving most of it to charity! Guilt free shopping!
posted by Iteki at 7:30 AM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


The focus on the subscription packages together with bundles that have good games I own or not so good games, means I haven't used Humble in a good while.
posted by ersatz at 2:04 PM on October 7, 2018


Humble bundle also does books. I just bought a bunch of coding books there on recommendation from, well a book was suggested in one conversation and humble bundle as a way to get that book in another conversation.
posted by bilabial at 3:36 PM on October 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Humble has been owned by IGN for almost exactly a year now, so if you haven't been bothered by the quality since, well, there you go
posted by flatluigi at 2:15 PM on October 8, 2018


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