This is rather unsettling to see, Humble Bundle has now officially joined with the massive media site IGN.
A small cut from their official announcement:
Announcing our biggest bundle ever: Humble Bundle is proudly joining the IGN family! We will continue to bring you all of our humble products, but with more resources and help from IGN.
I'm not entirely sure why Humble needed to join with anyone, considering the amount of money they were pulling in they must have been pretty secure. I'm sure they have their reasons, but something about this doesn't feel right to me. A media company controlling one of the biggest online stores and an occasional games publisher, it feels like a conflict there.
Gamasutra has reported that IGN executive VP Mitch Galbraith said that they don't plan to change anything, "If it's not broken, don't fix it", but then John Graham from Humble said "We want to stick to the fundamentals in the short term.", the key there is "short term". How long will it be until IGN start throwing a bit of weight around to change things up?
In the end though, it could end up being positive. There's no denying how big IGN is, so their extra resources could well help out Humble in a lot of ways.
Honestly, I would be really surprised now if we ever saw a proper Humble Indie Bundle again, I certainly doubt that Humble would ever be getting Linux games ported like they used to. We are more likely to see even more bundles from bigger publishers, likely more console bundles too.
See the full announcement from Humble here (Archive link). How do you feel about this?
It's been quite a long time that I dislike IGN way of testing game and spamming news. They sound pretty much like bad advertising against big cash and without any journalist skills... I really wonder what is the point of this. As IGN looks right now I kind of think that they completely scammed humble store...
It's important to stand against this and to be honest I was pleasantly surprised by your awareness towards this acquisition.
Last edited by Jahimself on 13 October 2017 at 8:28 pm UTC
I agree with every point mentioned by Liam. It is nothing encouraging to hear such a "news". It's been quite a long time that I dislike IGN way of testing game and spamming news which sound pretty much like bad advertising against big cash and without any journalist skills... I really wonder what is the point of this. As IGN looks right now I kind of think that they completely scammed humble store...
That's pretty much how I think as well.
I'm certain they'll ruin Humble.
Time to launch a Gaming on Linux Bundle site? I'll buy my games from you.
Time to launch a Gaming on Linux Bundle site? I'll buy my games from you.One step at a time, one day we shall conquer the world and spread the good word of Linux :P
Help indie devs, support charity, bring games to more platforms, and let users pay what they want and give them high quality games.
They lost their spirit along with success, little by little.
There are now nothing more than standard stores… they don't guarantee DRM-free anymore, or cross-platform, it's not even indie anymore, they deliver not so good games in average and they force the users to pay more than a certain amount to get every games.
This is HIGHLY disappointing, I used to respect them A LOT. Now they barely are a shadow of what they used to be.
Like others, I foresee the store now catering to more big name publishers instead of indies. I hope that i am wrong. Its fine to have both, but I prefer dealing with the smaller titles... the ones that actually care about the product they sell.
Humble Indie Bundle helped indie devs, it helped linux as a gaming platform. It even helped smaller studios with fraud. I fear it will end up with everything humble does in the future only being about the profit margin.
Again, I hope that I am wrong.
Last edited by Avehicle7887 on 13 October 2017 at 9:02 pm UTC
Humble bundle helped me achieve my collector status in Steam. Ha!
After having Humble Bundle on pause two months in a row (due to lack of good Linux games I didn't already own), I canceled completely a day or two ago. Seeing this acquisition news, I'm pessimistic that Humble Bundle will offer an experience I want to pay time or money for.
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