Humble Indie Bundle: Pay what you want for World of Goo and four others

by Mike Schramm on May 4th 2010 8:30PM

You've commented on Joystiq posts about oppressive DRM many times before. You dutifully wear your Target-purchased indie game t-shirt every week without fail. And you read every Joystiq Indie Pitch we post. But if you want to put some money towards supporting indie games, you won't find a better way to do it than this. Wolfire Games and a few other indie developers have put together the "Humble Indie Bundle" sale, offering five terrific award-winning indie games (World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru and Penumbra Overture) for the low, low price of ... whatever you want.

That's right -- they're asking you to pay what you feel is right for these bundled, non-DRM, developer-owned Mac, Linux or PC games. And that's not all: You can even specify part or all of your donation to go to a charity, either Child's Play or the Electronic Frontier Foundation. That's about as selfless as it gets in gaming -- pay what you think it's worth, to charity or the people who made it.

The average donation so far is about $8.00, but individuals have donated as much as $500 to the effort. You get lots of chances to say you support indie gaming, but fewer great chances like this to put your money where your mouth is. And walking away with five great indie titles to play doesn't hurt, either.

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Reader Comments (57)

Trying Putting 0 and prepare to laugh.

God help me I laughed.

Poor indie hobo...

Well, the guilt trip worked.

Amazingly, I still hadn't purchased World of Goo, even when *they* did pay-what-you-want thing.

this things bring out the worst in people.

=/ i dont use any of those payment methods.

i hate that these people just dont take credit cards straight up

I use ebay, so I therefore use Paypal. I trust them. Google checkout is also fine.

how does google check out work? or should i just google it.

Isn't it still better than piracy? Unless from here, you pay so little, they bleed money from the cost of their servers for all the cheapwads downloading the game vs. torrenting where no central server is affected.

nice, google checkout was easy to set up.

I fully support this type of scheme, and just hope people aren't douches - but like nerdydesi said, it's unlikely to be worse than piracy anyway. Plus, the (optional) charities are a great bonus.

^^^Is an awesome idea with awesome games and awesome charity causes. JUST DO IT PEOPLE! YOU CAN'T LOSE HERE!!!

- [X] Monies
+ 5 Games
+ 10 Karma
+ OVER 9000 AWESOME

It is a great idea. If only I had any money.

:)

You don't even have a penny?

A penny doesn't work. It only works if you pay a dollar or more.

A penny does so work. $0 doesn't, and anything under $1 gives you a guilt trip picture, but $0.01 does go through.

Actually, TaintedKain, I paid 10 cents. I completely ignored the hobo indie dev picture and went forward with my 10 cent payment.

I'd get Gish if it was for Steam, but...I don't know, somehow I'm too used to having my games available anywhere and all in one place now - it seems weird to just have separate ones.

*get for Gish. I've kinda been looking at it anyways. And the others would just be added bonus stuff. But yeah...

you can download them for steam? i mean, through this promotion?

You can add any game to your Steam games list, you know... Just install it and click a button at the bottom of the games list page in Steam and it'll be right there for you.

im pretty sure that just adds shortcut.

you can buy any game and unlock it on steam.

cant*

Yeah, Steam's shortcut system really sucks...and it only gives you access on computers where you've already got it installed. Which is why I keep some games in my dropbox - but that only works for small stuff.

Just buy it to give money to the developers.

I take it this is not Games for Windows Live version of World of Goo?

I actually hate these kind of things. I'd rather them give me a price, because paying anything lower makes me feel like a douche. I wonder if the people donating $500 even offsets those who pay next to nothing.

Except they're not losing anything when people pay next to nothing - it's a digital product. So it still works out for them. They're probably not even losing a sale, as I think anyone more than casually interested in the games would put a little more in to support the devs.

If you feel so bad, put in the average donation. It's still cheap and you don't feel awful.

Does it say if you need to choose mac, pc, or linux. Or does the file you download work for all of them?

After purchasing you are rediected to a page containing download links for the platform of your choice. They are separate files.

To clarify, they send you to a download links grid with the list of games and different platform columns. I grabbed them all and popped them on my home server so I don't have to ever come back looking for the receipt email down the road.

Friend paid 10 cents and got the games. They don't have to be over a dollar.

I literally paid a cent so, uh, yeah.

btw, big fan

donated $5 and you should do the same

Donated $10 and you should do the same

Donate more and weight it toward Child's Play.

I do love Child's Play, but actually cut the split for them down and gave more to the EFF. I donate to Child's Play every year, but rarely (maybe never) have I donated to the EFF, and I support the ideas behind their work even more.

Diversify your charity!

I do hope they show how payments were distributed, and how much they raised.

Paid five bucks, sounds like a good deal to me!

Mike, you should post the video in the post. The catchyness of it is great.

I know that world of goo is all the rage... how are the other games?
I already bought them for $5, just wondering which ones I should take a took at first

Aquaria is an interesting exploration game. Definitely worth the while, although it can get pretty massive. Explorers and completionists will love it.

Gish... Well, it's been a while since I played that one, but it's quite fun as well.

I might throw in a couple of bucks to try out the other two.

Am I okay with paying 50 bucks for these games when I could've exploited it and got these great games for nearly nothing? Yeah.

Voted with my wallet. I hope Ubisoft is listening.

Jeez, those people who paid 0.01 for WoG must really be feeling ripped off about now.

Sarcasm aside, I'm sitting here undecided as to which charity I should pick. Child's Play is my usual default for such things, but EFF could use the love. Or should I mix it with the devs? Decisions, decisions.

Also, this name your price sale is really good 'cause I have 26.90 left on an all-purpose gift card I want to use.

You could go 33% all around, or if you'd prefer it all go to charity, just go 0/50/50 in the custom percentage area.

I wound up clicking split evenly. I was sitting there doing the math for everyone involved, but the sliders weren't being very helpful.

I paid 15 and gave it all to the devs. Child's Play is going to get enough money, and I've got plenty more opportunities to donate later on in the year.

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Humble Indie Bundle: Pay what you want for World of Goo and four others

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