Humble Bundle decides you need another launcher for parts of Humble Choice

Humble Bundle has announced changes are coming in February for Humble Choice, so let’s go over what they’re going to be doing.

First up, they’re moving back towards how it started with Humble Monthly. There’s only going to be one single tier at $11.99 / £8.99 / €9.99 - with regional pricing and more regions supported, except if you’re on the Classic plan you continue to be billed in USD. The amount of games will fluctuate, and hopefully mean they will be better and you will get access to all of them.

Humble said: “Our focus is to bring you maximum bang for your buck through an expertly curated mix of awesome games. The exact number of games might vary each month, but no matter what our scouts choose, our mission is to always bring you a ton of value that’s well worth the price of admission. And as always, you can skip a month whenever you want or cancel anytime.”

Next up, they’ve decided you need another launcher with the Humble app, which will only be supported on Windows. This will be required for the new, additional, Humble Games Collection. This will contain a “growing” list of curated games. On top of that the Humble Trove is being renamed to the Humble Vault, which they say will remain “DRM-free” but it will also require the Humble app.

If you pause (now called Skip) or cancel, you lose access to the Humble Games Collection and the Vault.

Humble Store discounts are also changing. It’s no longer a set 10% or 20%. Instead, it’s based on how long you keep going.

• 1-2 months: 10%
• 3-5 months: 15%
• 6-11 months: 17%
• 12+ months: 20%

It’s clearly Humble Bundle grasping at straws to try and make their business work, as clearly a lot of people were pausing (skipping) months. Reducing the store discount, and taking away parts of it if you do that, they’re of course hoping more people keep it up.

Having more in an app does make some sense, even if I groan at yet another app, as it will remind people more often about what they offer. For Linux users though, having it as Windows-only will likely mean no more Linux builds for the Trove / Vault for example, so a step backwards there, but we’re still a small market they don’t exactly need to care much about.

Once the app is out, we’ll take a look and see if it can be made to run with Wine or set as a launcher in Steam to run with Proton.

The changes come into effect on February 1. Humble have said these changes do not affect the rest of the store or bundles they will do.

What do you think about the changes?