Humble Indie Bundle

isak  

So I just bought the Humble Indie Bundle #3. The Bundle is quite some way to sell games. I’ll try to calm down and explain it briefly:
1. These are indie games. Indie games are awesome. They are made by small scale companies or individual programmers who’d rather lay extra time on developing new creative ideas and fun details than marketing and state of the art graphics technology. They’re usually more driven by the desire to create than the desire to get paid.

2. All the money that doesn’t go to the developers go to higher purposes. You can choose yourself exacty how much money you want to spend on what purpose? Developers, charity and the Bundle staff are the ones you can pay, and you’re free to choose the proportions. I’m especially touched by the project Child’s Play, making sure as many hospitalized children as possible have access to video games. Child’s Play will probably receive half of the charity money. The rest will go to EFF. Greedy copyright loving middle-hands? Nowhere to be found.
3. Pay what you want. Games shouldn’t belong to rich people. But that shouldn’t mean indie developers shouldn’t get paid. This way, rich people pay the bills, but everyone can enjoy the games.
4. Take pride in your operating system. Not only do they make quite sure the games are operational on both Windows, Apple and Linux system. They also arrange a competition to see which users pays the most. When I write this, the stats are:

Average purchase: $4.40
Average Windows: $3.62
Average Mac: $5.56
Average Linux: $10.40

(The fact that notch, the creator of the great and successful indie game Minecraft has paid second most for the bundle, 2000$, is also noteworthy)
5. The games are DRM free. Install them on as many machines as you like. Install them on your Steam account. Let a friend test them. They’re your games.
Buy the Bundle yourself. I’ve already done it. You’ll enjoy it, the developers will enjoy it and the foundations will enjoy it.