Humble Indie Bundle Lets Buyers Pay Whatever They Want, But Piracy Still Prevails
Humble Indie Bundle Lets Buyers Pay Whatever They Want, But Piracy Still Prevails
Posted 05/11/2010 at 1:18am
| by Nathan Grayson
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We’ve heard of penny-pinching, but this is ridiculous. Given the option to – if they so desired – spend exactly one penny on six fantastic DRM-free indie games, 25% of downloaders still chose to pirate the bundle. The Wolfire Games blog explained:
“How do people pirate the bundle? 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. 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.”
Here’s the kicker, though: the proceeds earned from the bundle are split between indie game devs and charities. Granted, Wolfire’s speculation that some groups of gamers opted to make one big donation and then distribute the games among their friends might be right on the money, but that doesn’t mean every mega-miser out there’s off the hook.
Fortunately for your guilty conscience, there’s still time to set things right. As of publishing time, the Humble Indie Bundle still had 12 hours of life left in it, which is plenty of time for you to fork over whatever amount you want for World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, Samorost 2, and Penumbra: Overture. Plus, you’ll be helping sick kids! Karmatically speaking, that’s like earning one “Get out of Murder Free” card. (Unless it's used on a child.) What’s not to like?
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Zallomallo
May 11, 2010 at 12:57pm
Best spent dollar ever. I dunno why you'd pirate it if it's only 1 buck.
Caboose
May 11, 2010 at 1:09pm
Because people are morons?
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
Neufeldt2002
May 11, 2010 at 12:16pm
I'm not saying anything about piracy or not.
"Pay what you want" to me means just that, pay what "I" want. If you restrict the price to a certain min. or max. then it is NOT pay what "I" want, it is pay what "you" want. If you tell me I can buy something at a "pay what I want" price point, then I should be allowed to pay nothing. Morallity not with standing.
Caboose
May 11, 2010 at 12:01pm
For the lot of you that decided to pirate the games and use the excuse "EYE TRI BEEFOR EYE BYE!!", or "ETS KNOT WURTH ET!" you must have completely missed the fact that it's also for a charity. Even if you donate $5 and never play the games (or play them again), that $5 goes to help sick kids.
Would you still feel the same way if you had a child in the hospital, and a charity like this was raising money to help your kid?
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
Elric
May 11, 2010 at 10:35am
These games look like typical moronic casualware... this crap isn't worth hardly anything anyway and these guys have pulled in close to a million dollars in a week, so excuse me if I'm not filled with pity.
kookookachu
May 11, 2010 at 7:51am
Let me come clean and say I pirated the bundle.
Why, you ask? Easiest way to try before I buy.
And I liked what I saw, so I went and also bought it for $15.
Had I not liked it, this would have simply saved me the trouble/risk of using my credit card online.
kookookachu
May 12, 2010 at 6:57am
I don't care if they have demos, especially when I have a limited amount of money to spend and I want to be as informed as possible before I spend it and not after.
Besides, who are you to tell me what you think I do, when I've already told you what I do do?
Jo3
May 11, 2010 at 3:30am
From Torrentfreak on credible reasons why 25% did not pay:
"[the co-founder of Wolfire Games] mentions that the download links have been posted all over the
Internet and that some people would rather click on those directly, than
go through the entire payout process just to send over a penny. We
could call this the laziness or convenience argument to pirateAnother explanation is that the payment processors that are used are
not available in every country, so some people couldn’t pay even if they
wanted to. In a similar vein, but not mentioned by the Wolfire team, is
that many people in the target audience are young and don’t have access
to a credit card.These two payment restrictions are related to availability, which is a
common reason for people to pirate. Even if they want to buy something
legally, they can’t because they don’t have access to a credit card or
are in a country where they can’t use the required payment processors.Other reasons for downloading without paying could be that one
downloads the bundle from different computers after having paid, or that
the download is shared with friends who made a joint donation. These
should not be counted as ‘piracy’ either."On top of all that I don't think 25% can reasonably be said to prevail over 75%.
quickone
May 11, 2010 at 8:53am
What? Not having a source to pay isn't even close to a legit reson to pirite it. If I go to the store and don't have a way to pay, I DON'T GET ANYTHING. Walking up to the check out and saying, you don't accept my cash or my credit cards so I'm just going to take it wouldn't fly.
I have only played world of goo and loved it, just bought the bundle for $15.
~~The difference between insanity and genius is merely succes~~
kookookachu
May 11, 2010 at 9:22am
Steal a book? Book gone.
Copy a file? File is still there.
The game devs lost nothing from piracy, especially since they're technically giving away their games for $.01.
So, wakeup call: if the devs themselves are giving their games away for free, you should get off your high horse and stop trying to pass senseless rhetoric for valid argumentation.
kookookachu
May 11, 2010 at 2:01pm
Nope, I don't think I did.
Your analogy is wrong: if you take my car --which is physical, finite property-- then you don't just break the law, but also violate an unwritten social contract between people that says "I don't take your stuff, and you don't take my stuff, so we can live and let live". It's our primal concept of ownership that instinctively tells us that taking somebody's stuff without permission is immoral.
However, as is the case with file copying, if you make a copy of both the car keys and the car, is it still immoral? Clearly, an intangible thing --much like an idea-- cannot be owned and we have no similar innate preconceptions about copying. So, quite frankly, it's not "freaking wrong" unless you somehow rationalise --mistakenly-- that an artificial scarcity such as copyright has the same status as real scarcity in real property. That mistake is all too common, and can easily be attributed to a lifetime of brainwashing.
kookookachu
May 12, 2010 at 6:38am
You are comparing fraud, identity theft and plagiarism with unauthorised file copying, all the while talking about something called "my mind blowingly stupid" and "my retarded."
You keep comparing copyright infringement with "stealing," even when legally they are totally different things -- that's why they have different names to begin with, you know.
So, like SuperiorBeing has already pointed out, you are rude and you are wrong. I'll take a guess and say you are a confused teenager who has never engaged in civilized conversation, and there's just no point in dignifying your post with further comments.
Anonymoose
May 14, 2010 at 4:32am
Being a software developer, I sincerely hope you have/will choose a profession in which you will be ripped off repeatedly and not receive what you deserve, due to pirates or if you prefer, by "people who make a copy so it's not stealing" cheating you out of the money you would have otherwise received.
You people deserve no less.
kookookachu
May 15, 2010 at 2:54am
I AM a software developer, and a very successful one too.
Piracy is one of the best things that ever happened to software development. Just look at the Indie bundle -- they made over $1m in a week, and now they've released most of their games as open source. That's despite piracy, which I'm positive acted as a catalyst for further sales rather than as a sinkhole like most have been led to believe.
Caboose
May 15, 2010 at 4:37pm
WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!
*sobs*
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
kookookachu
May 16, 2010 at 7:28am
Your precious charities made over $300k. What else do you want exactly?
SuperiorBeing
May 12, 2010 at 5:05am
@JuanSolid, just wanted to mention that if you want people to take you seriously, it would probably help to use you're instead of your. It's a pretty simple distinction between the two, and when you insult the other person, but use the wrong word in your own arguments, no-one is going to respect what you post. Saying that stealing your bank account information is the same as copying software is inane. Copying has no adverse effects, other than potential loss of customer, but copying bank account information is a way to steal actual money. I think you can tell the difference between the two.
I have pirated games in the past, but I actually paid $5 for the humble games bundle. Why? Beacuse I want to help these people out. They're making games that are cross platform, and I really love games like World of Goo, and I have no problem with supporting game developers or charities, so I paid a pittance and got something nice that also runs on Ubuntu and Windows and OS X (although my hackintosh plans never worked out).
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