IGN, a game and entertainment media company, has acquired Humble Bundle, a distributor of video games that raises money for charities:
Media giant IGN announced today that it has acquired Humble Bundle, the company best known for selling packs of indie games at pay-what-you-want prices. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This is potentially a big deal for game developers, since Humble has expanded beyond its bundling business to publish games, pay devs to make games for its subscription-based monthly game club, maintain a subscription-based online game trove, and operate an online game storefront.
However, a press release confirming the deal also noted that Humble will continue to operate independently in the wake of the acquisition, with no significant business or staffing changes. It will have some degree of support from IGN (which is itself owned by digital media giant J2 Global), specifically in terms of accelerating growth and raising more money for charity.
I think I stopped using Humble Bundle when they started removing the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a charity option for some bundles.
Also at VentureBeat and Humble Mumble (official blog).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14 2017, @05:38PM (2 children)
Once upon a time Humble Bundle sold exclusively multi-platform and DRM-free games. This was really awesome and I supported it with my dollars. It was also super easy to give them money.
Then they started selling DRM-encumbered crap, so I stopped paying them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by edIII on Saturday October 14 2017, @06:10PM (1 child)
Not entirely fair.
They were always about charity first, and then the anti-drm positions second. Plus, you could say how much you wanted to pay for the bundles. The DRM-encumbered crap from the larger outfits was only sold because it raised dollars for charity.
You can still get DRM-free games from them and give to charity. They've not completely changed their stripes.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @05:33PM
Last time I looked at a humble bundle (some years ago) there was no obvious indication about whether or not the games in the bundle included DRM. I know from past experience that they sometimes sell games with DRM, so without any indication I could not know whether or not the games include DRM.
I don't want to buy anything that is DRM-encumbered by accident, so the only reasonable choice was to not puchase anything.
A prominent sentence like "All of the games in this bundle are DRM-free!" could have helped.