The organic liveform that is Humble Bundle has just grown yet another branch. This time, their actions may or may not have been enough to help out a struggling publisher. There are some complaints though. Was this even worth it after all?
The recently ended Humble Bundle was a special one indeed: it featured games from well-known publisher THQ, . To be frank, the $5.76 average purchase price is quite low considering the ridiculous amounts of content available – nine(!) AAA titles plus a DLC for Red Faction: Armageddon. It has made over 5 million dollars total, which, mind you, will be divided between charity, THQ and Humble Bundle itself based on the buyers’ choices in contributions. So all in all, probably not the greatest financial first-aid kit for the California-based publisher.
I think we, the consumers have had a fantastic opportunity here, this was an unbelievably good deal. Hell, just do the math: 55 cents per game! I don’t think that the anomalious complaints about “the spirit of Humble Bundle” or the lack of Linux/Mac support are verifiable in this case. If nothing else, consider that this is most probably going to be a one-off. I’d be very surprised if we’d see other well-renowned publishers trying this method of awareness increase, which in this case was most likely the focal point of this operation, apart from getting new prospective buyers for the upcoming sequels etc. for the games featured in the bundle in the near future.
I just can’t imagine a situation where the Humble Bundle team would have a choice between featuring an indie bundle or an AAA bundle. The worries about indie games losing the spotlight here is ridiculous because there’s no reason to take that spolight away in the first place.
The Humble Bundle as a brand also got a popularity bump out of this, apart from these ridiculous complaints about the supposed spirit from a vocal minority. They did manage to sell almost 900.000 units, after all.
In the end, the THQ bundle was more worth it to us than to the publisher. It probably wasn’t enough to save THQ but it sure as hell saved us a ton of money.
