Humble Indie Bundle: World of Goo for under $5

[Ramor]

http://www.wolfire.com/humble

Includes: World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD and Penumbre Overture
Pay what you want DRM free indie games, a few definitely worth checking out since you can essentially get them for free if you want. If you don't mind paying a bit though all of the money goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play which are two pretty awesome charities.

[Vandole]

holy hell

i can now get world of goo!

[Kaisha]

I kinda want to grab the pack, but at the same time I kinda like having all my digitally-downloaded games delivered via Steam as I don't have to remember to keep a backup somewhere, and that I like seeing all the games I own in a nice grand list.

What's really pulling me in though is that they offer Mac/Linux versions alongside the Steam ones. A couple bucks for some Mac-friendly games couldn't hurt, and I could just burn it all to a DVD I guess.

Downloads are on a per-OS basis, which kinda blew. Was hoping for a single download per game that had multiple executables packed in that used the same media assets to save me bandwidth, oh well, they're all <300mb at any rate.

Anyone able to recommend the second Penumbra game btw? With the donation code I can get it for $5. Played a bit of the first one and enjoyed its method of object interaction. Will play more of it tomorrow and see if it's worth grabbing the second one cheap while the offer is still up.


Btw, should rename thread "World of Goo for under $5" to garner more thread interest.

[Ramor]

yeah, i suppose i really should have, but for some reason i thought more people had heard about this and would recognize the name

[Qalbert]

got an email today

Dear Humble Bundle supporter,

I have a small announcement you might be interested in. This morning, I was talking to fellow indie studio Amanita Design. They wanted to donate to the Humble Indie Bundle too -- but in a unique way. They decided to donate their award-winning, cross-platform game, Samorost 2, to the bundle! It is really a great game, and I encourage you to go download it on your updated Humble Bundle key page.

[dejet]

info about the bundle, I did pick it up for $15 as I am willing to bet others did. It really is sad what this says. >.< if what this says is true, even a $1 a person that would have been some 20,000+ earned.

edit: if you add the price of the games up(ones you can get on steam; they total over $64. That does not count lugaru HD thats not on steam.)

Spoiler: show

Humble Bundle gives pirates what they want, gets ripped off
By Ben Kuchera | Last updated about 9 hours ago

The Humble Bundle is a great deal for gamers for a number of reasons. The games work on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. You can pay as little or as much as you want, and you can donate some or all of the money to the included charities. There is absolutely no DRM on any of the games. So why does it look like one quarter of the people enjoying the games have pirated them?

Unpacking the actual numbers behind piracy is often difficult, but Wolfire has been incredibly transparent about its numbers. The result is strong evidence that no matter what steps developers take, piracy will still be an issue.
Piracy is inevitable

We spoke to Jeffery Rosen, cofounder of Wolfire Games, about the piracy rate of the Humble Bundle. "I think piracy is absolutely inevitable—this is a really clear example of it," Rosen said. "People will literally not pay a penny to a charity in order to legitimately get a bundle of games that they want."

Rosen points out that the Bundle has stripped away nearly every rationalization for piracy. "A lot of the common rationalizations for piracy simply don't exist here: DRM, an agent between you and the developers, or high prices. Some people rationalize it by claiming they can't pay—but they could have asked their mom. They could have e-mailed us (we're currently at inbox zero for support requests)." Rosen claims they received thousands of technical support questions throughout the week, about 10 of them relating to payment.

Those who e-mailed and said they couldn't pay? The number was so low that Rosen personally made a contribution on their behalf.

Pirating the Humble Bundle titles is easy. "When I say this bundle is DRM-free—I really mean DRM-free. Not only do the games themselves have no copy protection (not even a simple serial number check), but the Humble Indie Bundle website has limited copy protection," Rosen wrote on the official blog. "That means there are no download limits, everything is reachable on the command-line with 'wget', you can resume downloads, and do anything else you would expect to be able to do with a personal download link." Linux users in particular praised these decisions to make the downloads painless.
Are there reasons to pirate?

Rosen came up with a few reasons people feel the need to pirate games. Laziness is a big one: it's simply easier to click a link than to fill out the fields needed to donate even a single cent. There may be customers who live in an area where PayPal, Google Checkout, and Amazon are not supported, leaving them with no way to pay. Some people may have made a single large donation for multiple bundles. Others may simply like the feeling of getting something for nothing.

Rosen lays out these reasons, saying that Wolfire doesn't plan on doing anything to thwart those who pirate the games. "When considering any kind of DRM, we have to ask ourselves, 'How many legitimate users is it OK to inconvenience in order to reduce piracy?' The answer should be none."

This is why the DRM debate is so destructive. There is no technology that can't be cracked, and invasive strategies only make the companies targets for the more aggressive hackers and crackers. If you give gamers everything they say they want, there will still be a significant number of people who will grab the game without paying. "A lot of these people don't just pirate the game, they take pleasure in spreading the pirated links to their friends or anonymous buddies for fun," Rosen told Ars. "They just don't care, and if you can't get someone to pay a penny in this case—will they really pay full price for a game?"

While piracy may be frustrating, the bundle has been quite the success: as of this writing almost 84,000 people have paid $716,944 in total for the games.

[Kaisha]

More info on that from the guy who's running the bundle: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Savi...e-Indie-Bundle

Honestly, I like the guy, he's cool headed, and obviously knows that trying to 'fight' piracy is a losing battle, so he just goes on and goes to what he's been doing from the start, appealing to the customers and trying to raise as much money as possible for the drive.

I have to say his game Lugaru, while although lame looking, dated, 'furry', and lacking in presentation, it actually has some damn fun combat. Nice and fast with twitch-reaction timing for countering. I wouldn't mind seeing a proper follow-up with a budget in the future that feels more like a tech demo, as I loved running around at full speed and pouncing your enemy before they spot you.
(granted, the game was basically all done by himself as is which is somewhat impressive in this day and age. World of Goo was done by just two for the most part as well)

[Atreides]

Aquaria is pretty awesome, btw, neat Metroidvania-type game with pretty 2d graphics, good music, and swimming/singing

[dejet]

Aquaria is pretty awesome, btw, neat Metroidvania-type game with pretty 2d graphics, good music, and swimming/singing

I am having a blast with Aquaria ~_~ did not know about the game till this, world of goo is what got me to buy this in the first place, but I find myself playing Aquaria now lol

[Necronus]

I'm in the Aquaria boat as well, was worth the donation even if I never touch the others.

[Atreides]

I'm actually thinking about doing this to get Penumbra, as well as a copy of Aquaria for my macbook. Is Penumbra any good?

[Shojin]

Donated $10. Kind of sucks that people are pirating this shit when you can just pay $1.

[Kaisha]

$1? You can donate a penny and still get it.

I'm actually thinking about doing this to get Penumbra, as well as a copy of Aquaria for my macbook. Is Penumbra any good?

I've been enjoying it, although for some reason it's crash-happy on my PC, where-as it's perfectly fine on my Mac as long as I stick to standard resolutions.
(the shader effects were buggered up for some reason when I tried one of the widescreen resolutions other than 1440x900 & 1280x720)

You definitely need to play it with lowered expectations if you're used to next-generation games, as the game does have some rough spots in its presentation, but dear god it makes me tense in the dark sections when I'm trying to conserve battery power for my flashlight and there's something slowly creeping along ahead of me.

If you want to be cheap, I can PM you the coupon code that allows you to buy a digital copy of Penumbra Complete (1st/2nd game + expansion) for $5 from the developers' site. But honestly, you may as well donate a buck or five to the charity anyway as the games inside are well worth the cash.
(charity copy of Penumbra has the coupon included which is how I came across it)

[Atreides]

I just decided to donate 10 bucks and go for it. I already have World of Goo for PC (got it on clearance at target for $3.78) and Aquaria (which is normally $30, but I got it for $20 on steam) but now I have copies of both, and the 4 other games, for mac.

I should maybe beat Aquaria on at least one system though lol