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The Humble Games Situation Gets Messier With Claims Of Lies And Damage Control (insider-gaming.com)

submitted 3 months ago by simple@lemm.ee to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] jedibob5@lemmy.world 129 points 3 months ago

Humble used to be an event that celebrated and showcased indie developers while at the same time raising many millions for charities. Then IGN bought it and rapidly enshittified it into a bog-standard, for-profit corporate enterprise like any other, and I'll never forgive them for it.

Do they even give any of the profits to charity any more? If they do, I bet they only keep it around to take advantage of the tax writeoffs.

[-] steal_your_face@lemmy.ml 47 points 3 months ago

Humble bundle does still give to charity. The default they give is usually extremely low but on bundles you can adjust the sliders though they’ve now hidden it underneath the purchase button.

Not sure if humble games ever gave to charity.

[-] criss_cross@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

Yeah like the default is 1 dollar for 20 or something pathetic.

And there's a mandatory humble bundle tip that used to not be there.

[-] Protoknuckles@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

I'm ok with the humble tip. Got to keep the lights on. As long as I can send the majority to charity.

[-] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

They shifted it from a $0 minimum to $7.50.

That's more than keeping the lights on money, as the old humble was doing that just fine without any mandatory amount. Even taking into account taht they want to pay off their fresh purchase, IGN is gouging.

It doesnt help either that the charity slider is always set to a minimum now. It used to be evenly weighted, but now it's weighted about 45%/45% IGN and the vendor, with maybe 10% to the charity by defualt. You have to click through a hidden menu to fix it.

[-] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

And they made it such a pain in the ass when you adjust the sliders to maximize the charitable donation and then the cut for the content provider. Like, let me just put in amounts so I can max out the charity donation, minimize the payment to Humble, and give the rest to the content provider.

[-] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

This used to be super easy, back when I bought bundles practically religiously. Glad I cut the habit after they sold out to IGN.

[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 40 points 3 months ago

I had to unsubscribe to their emails as I was getting so sent so many “deals”. The value evaporated once they got bought.

[-] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Humble Bundle was cool when it was an occasional event focused on charity and indie devs. Once it became something that was going pretty much all the time it quickly lost any interest I had.

[-] smeg@feddit.uk 38 points 3 months ago

TIL there is even a situation! I guess this explains why I've not even heard about any good bundles for a few years.

[-] sparr@lemmy.world 30 points 3 months ago

humble games is a game publisher, only connected to humble bundle through corporate ownership. most games in humble bundles aren't published by humble games, and most games published by humble games don't end up in humble bundles

[-] smeg@feddit.uk 1 points 3 months ago

Noted, thanks

[-] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 18 points 3 months ago

They still have a good bundle from time to time, but it's a far cry from the bundles of old.

[-] SquigglyEmpire@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago

I think this news only affects Humble Games but not Humble Bundle, confusingly they are separate but semi-related businesses these days.

[-] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago

To be honest with you, my reply was supposed to be to the comment saying that humble has gotten worse overall since IGN bought them. Didn't realize my mistake until now.

[-] SquigglyEmpire@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Ah understood!

[-] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 months ago

The OG numbered bundles were so damn good

[-] Cadeillac@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

I wonder what will happen with Choice. Without it I'll be down to a VPN and one other subscription (Peacock for wrestling for the curious). My VPN (PIA, you curious people) was bought out by a Chinese company if I remember correctly, and just recently announced a price increase. It wasn't a whole lot, but it's not a direction I enjoy, so I'm already rethinking that.

I digress, I know Humble of old already died, but it will be a sad day to see it gone for good.

[-] warm@kbin.earth 14 points 3 months ago

This is about their game publishing branch, not the store.

[-] Cadeillac@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

That's what I was hoping, but it still has me nervous. The store is probably profitable, but the bundles have never been the same

[-] warm@kbin.earth 4 points 3 months ago

Yeah, doesn't bode well. Turned into your typical greedy company with the IGN buyout, as much as they could within the limits of keeping old charirty values.

[-] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Check out mullvad for a vpn. Not the cheapest, but immensely good and ethical. They have been audited and walk the walk.

[-] Cadeillac@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Bet, thanks for the tip!

[-] Hexarei@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago

If you know your way around a Linux terminal, or can follow simple terminal instructions, I always recommend folks host their own OpenVPN server. $5/month for a digital ocean instance and now I never have to worry about some provider hiking my VPN prices or snooping on my traffic.

[-] Cadeillac@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

I was already planning on moving over to Linux, and can get around enough. This is amazing info, as I've moved more into self hosting and didn't even realize that was an option. Definitely something to look into once I find a permanent residence. Thank you!

[-] Hexarei@programming.dev 1 points 3 months ago

You're welcome, feel free to ask any questions once you get there

[-] Cadeillac@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

You are awesome friend! It won't be anytime soon. We lost our place to a fire and are getting by in motels for now. Everyone survived and a lot more than expected was salvageable, so we keep moving forward.

At some point I'll throw my old parts together into a Linux server. I was just hosting everything on my main rig, which obviously is not ideal. I've seen a bit of discussion on both sides of docker, do you have any input one way or the other?

[-] Hexarei@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago

Ah, I've generally run my VPN primary exit node in a public cloud infrastructure host like Digital Ocean or AWS in order to provide a separate public IP from the rest of my stuff, and not give out my home IP to public Wi-Fi and such.

I like docker, as long as you use a good orchestration tool it's a good way to declaratively define what should be running on your server, using a compose file or similar. There are a lot of benefits to the overhead of learning it, including running multiple instances of the same service on one machine without conflicts, and the ability to force your hosted apps to store all of their data in nice neat packages you can easily back up with something like Duplicity or Volumerize.

I actually run my containers on a small kubernetes cluster using VMs running k3s atop Proxmox, with persistence handled by a hyperconverged ceph cluster. All probably very overkill but it's fun to play with and performs incredibly. Most folks can get away with a single server running containers with simple docker compose.