Do you use sliders when you buy Weekly bundles?
I'm gonna e-mail IGN about this, seems like a story worth writing about.
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That’s a gigantic yikes :/
Why aren’t more people speaking up about this? First small greedy changes and now this.
Also checked. Sliders are gone for me too.
I’ve never given humble 0 either :/
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Didn't use sliders myself.
Maybe several years ago when I started using Humble and SG .. but mostly I forgot about it being there.
That is a huge dick move by humble though. Totally disagree with the way they are going on even if I didn't use the sliders.
Probably thought of slowly changing things up in favor of them with hope of no one catching them in the act.
Edit : Although I think this is more like another red flag about humble being in a bad situation. Seems like they already have problems with keeping costumers and when those who are left prefer to give more to charity, they are left without nothing. I have a feeling nothing good will come from humble. Who knows how long theyll keep Choice running. As weekly bundles have slowly been disappearing already.
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I wonder about their non-game bundles too some of them are decent cross promotion, but specially some of the book bundles might have questionable value in them...
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"questionable value" is an interesting way to put it - I've seen at least one programming book bundle where everything in it was years out of date, one 'maker' style bundle where every book bar one was available free elsewhere, a programming video course which offered courses that the originator of the courses had archived as out of date 2 years earlier, and a music bundle (which I naively bought) which contained no licence info and stolen music. For that pack, they refused to supply licence info claiming that I had to get it from the originator - but the originator had taken down the products being offered from all other websites (probably due to them being mostly stuff he didn't have permission to use) and refused to acknowledge that the files in question had ever existed. I'm still not clear whether he stole the music, or sold the rights outright to someone, but either way neither he nor Humble had any authority to sell the music licence for further commercial use. Humble's failure (refusal) to supply any licence information, despite selling the music pack as a "creator's" pack "for use in your own games, videos, or other projects" seems to be their way of saying "you can't blame us, we didn't actually give you permission to use it commercially". Thankfully, the real owner of the licence, who has the documentation and lawyers to back up that title, was nice enough to accept the reality of the situation and change their focus to pursuing Humble instead of me.
The value of buying from them is certainly "questionable" when it can end up costing you lawyer's fees on top of what you pay for the bundle.
Humble was awesome when it started up, but it didn't last.
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Call paypal and complain about your ability to use giving fund. I called from my charity account and they said no users had reported it yet,
Another charity I know emailed me if I knew anything about it as their intern was talking about it, small world.
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Damn thats wild that they being like that. I usually always give most of the money to charity so they prolly took mine away too.
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By "sliders" you mean those little hamburgers, right?
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I can't see the sliders anymore either. I started turning the Humble Tip to 0 after it was acquired. After all IGN isn't very humble...
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Personally, it's a good change, the sliders should have never been there in the first place. It ensure that every party involved in the bundle get something.
Sometimes you don't like the devs or you couldn't care less about the charity or humble just pissed you off with their last choice and you decided to give them a big nothing on a weekly bundle.
I don't see anything scummy in that decision. It is really a rational one.
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If they wanted to get rid of it, announce it. That's a huge change. Their wording still says you can adjust, Paypal (who hosts the giving fund for charity) was not made aware of any changes, so it is scummy if intentional.
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You are right. I thought they made it official but now that i checked they didn't communicate at all about the change (yeah the wording still being there makes this confusing).
Either they are staying silent and testing the waters and will revert if people care enough or it is a bug they are trying to solve.
Staying silent doesn't help their case at all whatever is happening.
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It ensure that every party involved in the bundle get something.
It's possible to ensure that every party gets something by putting a minimal value on the slider. Not providing any sliders ensures that the division is the way IGN wants, which is skewed towards more money to them and less to charity. So it's a dick move.
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I absolutely agree with you now that we have more infos on how they handled that change. Naively, i thought the money would be split equally, but only 5% for the charity is really indecent.
I still believe the sliders should be removed but money should be split more fairly.
They have been really aggressive with choice bundle discount for newcomers and even for veterans with a classic plan. I think their strategy didn't pay off and now they are trying to get money where they can.
Probably one of the worst decision they made so far.
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They at least show the division now.
I think that allowing the user to set a division would be good. The sliders were frankly quite bad, IMO. Just letting me set percentages in the settings and have them applied to all purchases would have been nice.
Regarding the division, with stores starting to lower the percentage they take (thanks to Epic), having 30% go to Humble is too much IMO. Humble Store led the way by taking only 15% with 10% to charity, leaving 75% to devs, but that changed since then. I would have been fine with this kind of cut, it's much better than 30% + 5% + 65%. Humble just feels greedy now.
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Logged out, removed cookies. Logged back in managed to give all money to Black Library!
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Haven't bought in ages, but checked their one bundle and yeah, I see no sliders.
I generally gave 100% to charity (not the default), with VERY few exceptions. So this really sucks. But wont affect me if they keep just not putting out anything worth buying anyway.
Still wish the sliders would be there if they offer something interesting again for once...
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It's been a while since I bought anything there, I used to mess around with sliders and favored developers/charities more, no sliders for me.
Had no plans of buying anything in the near future either way, this slimy underhanded move just reinforced my decision.
Unless they clear up the misunderstanding in the near-future, which I highly doubt, it's a deliberately misleading anti-consumer move.
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It seems that disabling the sliders is enforced server-side (interesting experiment):
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So, it seems Humble officially getting rid of sliders now in exchange for an "extra to charity" option, which increases charity percentage from 5 to 15. I don't know how it'll work in case of a few charities present. I guess you'll be forced to support the charity you are not interested in. It was good while it lasted. Humble continues to sink further it seems... It sucks.
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they say it increases it but it actually limits it significantly. 5% to charity will be the default and the MAX you can give to charity is 15% now. it definitely sucks and i won't be using humble until this is reversed, and they issue an apology to all of their customers and the charities they are stealing from.
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It "increases" only compared to a minuscule default setting. They basically capped amount you can donate to charity and presented slightly less atrocious option to pretend they still care about charities. All while additionally take away choice of charity you want to support in favor of default ones. Which are... let's say less than trilling.
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Can't tell if this is humble bundle or the publishers trying to push for more money
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It's most likely the only way they can really see a future for their service, what with publishers becoming less and less interested in putting their games in bundles (the steady decrease over the years in the quality of bundles should be noticeable) - what with the whole business with 3rd party sellers and traders. I think if this was solely about Humble making more money, they would have raised their amount a bit more than that, rather than setting so much to publishers.
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They could just scout out good indie games like they used to before ign acquired them but that would make too much sense to follow the business model of the highly successful business that you bought because it was highly successful...
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They could just scout out good indie games like they used to
But that's the thing... indie games do not need bundles anymore to to be successful and reach a wider audience. It was the case years ago, when game bundles started appearing. Indie devs had to compete with bigger fish, I think they were hardly featured on Steam's store... Things have changed since then, thanks among other things to streamers. They can hype unknown games in no time. That happened for Phasmophobia last fall. Also, it doesn't help that games get insanely devalued once they are bundled. That must not be particularly attractive to devs and publishers alike. I think that, now, they see bundles as a last resort. If they really can't get enough sales even with deep discounts, if their games are multiplayer and they lack a player base, if their games are kinda crappy... might as well get them in bundles.
Or if they want to push DLC / season pass sales. Get the base game in a bundle, hope for people to purchase what's missing. :3
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i dont see the logic in "indies dont need bundles anymore". are you under the impression that AAAs do need them? because humble absolutely has no leverage in negotiations with AAAs whereas being spotlit as a curated game on Humble can be very helpful. sure, its easy to publish on steam... too easy some may say. good indies get buried among the trash on there.
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i dont see the logic in "indies dont need bundles anymore".
Well if you didn't see why indies don't need game bundles anymore to appeal to a wider audience with my previous comment, I can't really make it more explicit.
are you under the impression that AAAs do need them?
No, and I don't think my comment pointed to that anyway so I'm not sure why you felt the need to point that out.
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Yes, the asset flip trash you can find at DIG and IG do need bundles because they probably can't sell by themselves, seeing how terrible they are.
Did you really read what I wrote previously? I don't think bundles are as needed now as they used to be for (indie) devs/publishers for many reasons. I think that over the years, it's been increasingly difficult for HB to convince devs/publishers to have their games appear in bundles... which is maybe why Choice bundles lack "good" indie games as you said and why we see the same games being rebundled countless times.
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I just disagree is all. I think more than ever, true indies (not annapurna or devolver digital "indie". I mean actually indie, self-published etc) could use the marketing of being featured in a humble bundle since the trash asset flip games take up space on steam and bury anything without a marketing budget or a game journo's endorsement. I just don't think that phasmophobia or among us are the "norm" and don't represent the market that indie devs have to deal with. Waiting for a miracle for a big streamer to discover your game is a much harder thing to accomplish than to partner with indiegala or humble etc.
As far as choice goes, I think the indie games they've included have been pretty decent. It's the expectation that humble monthly set to include good AAA games that is a major issue for me with humble choice, because after they switched the program to choice, they've been about 50/50 on whether I would pause a month or not. I still have 2 more months left and I bought a year as soon as choice started, basically skipping half of them.
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I mean actually indie, self-published etc) could use the marketing of being featured in a humble bundle since the trash asset flip games take up space on steam and bury anything without a marketing budget or a game journo's endorsement.
Yeah... but it's a double-edged sword. Having your game bundled might give it more exposure (and only for a short period of time), but most bundled games lose a ton of value afterwards, especially the not-so-desirable ones (I'm thinking Avernum 3 for instance, very niche, was in a HB Monthly in... 2019, if I'm not mistaken, never been rebundled, you can still find copies going for less than a dollar). Granted that not everyone purchases from gray market sites, but even if you don't even take that into account... Once a game is bundled, I think that a lot of people will wait for the next time that game is bundled instead of purchasing it on its own, even if it's on sale at 80% off. Heck, even bundles are often deemed too pricey... Each time there's a new bundle thread up, you see people commenting about how it's not worth it / too expensive for what it is. Sure, value can be a very subjective matter but still... it's sometimes a bit ridiculous. I think that in the long run, there are more downsides to having your game bundled than upsides.
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I hate the new system explained in the blog. I posted my opinion on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/humblebundles/comments/mx1be0/a_note_about_sliders_and_hb_bundle_pages_how_it/
You can send that text to HB Support, maybe if enough people bug them, they'll change the announced system to something better.
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The not being able to really talk to them outside of closed emails was always so bothersome to me.
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Yep, something I always hated each time, and something I specially hate about Steam. Such big benefits and small staff to really offer good support and user communication.
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Let’s start with sliders. About a month ago, we turned on a test that hid sliders for certain customers.
[...]
The lesson for us was that we should have been more proactive in communicating the test.
I can live without sliders, but how is it okay to do a "test" by removing a feature while still advertising it? It's not that they should be more proactive about communicating, but rather not lie about what they offer.
I know, slippery slope, but what's next? Games that give uPlay or Epic keys when they are advertised as Steam keys? No 20% off in the store for being a subscriber because they are "testing a new system" by disabling it for some users? -.-
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The change (if numbers stays the same) will encourage publishers to put their games in a bundle. On default the charity gets 5% and Humble 10%, everything else goes to the publishers. Extra charity option is interesting, 15% for charity is not awful (20% would have been a better number) and Humble only gets 5%.
The way they "tested" this was pretty stupid, but this might bring better bundles on the table.
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From the gif it looks like 85%pub, 5%charity, 10%HB originally, then 80%, 15%, 5% if extra to charity, so both publisher and HB ceed 5% each if deciding to give more to charity.
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Humble right now gets 30%, am I supposed to really believe their GIF that states that they will get 10% by default and 5% if I decide to contribute more to charity?
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lets not forget they also make a ton of money off selling everybodys info
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I was getting those shitty monthlies to help. I've got my reward with this shitty decision. Seems like the time to unbsuscribe for good.
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Is this because publishers complained? Since by default they're going to get 85% from now on, and 80% for the other option. It feels weird buying games for charity when barely anything actually goes to charity.
I don't really buy bundles anymore, I haven't bought from Humble in probably 6 months, but I have an exception for (very rare) LEGO and visual novel bundles. The LEGO wish came true today but I felt a bit disgusted buying it.
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I can still select my preferred charity - but no sliders. But what's the bigger problem: I only got one "add to cart" button - and that's to add the choice bundle... there is no "add to card" or "buy" button that actually lets me put a bundle into the shopping cart and go to checkout. Is it just me or are you guys having the same issue? (The only think left are the Paypal direct pay options and such...)
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You never had to add these bundles to cart. You just select how much money you want to pay, and click "pay with paypal" or "pay with card", or "alipay" button below.
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Huh... that's odd. That's not how I remember it 🤷♂️
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Man the bit in the blog post where they say "We’re grateful to all of you for building a community that cares so much about supporting charity." feels a bit painful given their proposed change.
As for dev/publisher pressure. Let's take the New Couch Classics Bundle. 7 games in a $10 tier 3. Even 100% to devs is about $1.43 a game. Those games are $14-20 on steam. In the case of the $20 games that's in the ballpark of what they would get for selling on Steam at 90% off ($1.40 after valve cut). So I don't think much is changing in this regard (I'd never sat down and actually done the numbers before this). I remember long ago a hearing of a dev who thought Humble would bring big momentum for them (the idea being they have more exposure and visibility with their works in peoples libraries) but it turned out to a small cash injection instead.
There is also the matter that if you have no sliders now, you won't have any until late May (support are telling people sliders won't be re-enabled). Heck, late May is going to be when they "begin testing" so you might not even get the new look page either unless you are their chosen test subject. What a joke.
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i don't really mind - i think this might help bring in better bundles like the lego one and therefore they might sell quite a few more bundles and end up even making more for the charities and the dev's get a nice slice so they can also afford to keep people in a job longer which is good and make new games or dlc which is also good
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and end up even making more for the charities and the dev's get a nice slice so they can also afford to keep people in a job longer which is good and make new games or dlc which is also good
You must be new to the gaming industry.
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no i'm not why do you ask? the charities on the lego bundle at 5% would have made over 7.5k already
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In Humble Weekly (non-Choice) bundles you could use sliders to direct money you are paying for the bundle to either publishers, charity (often you could choose which one), or Humble itself. It was still there a few days ago, now it's gone from all bundles. I wonder is it a bug or a new feature? I hope it's not the latter case because both default proportion that goes to charity (≈10%) and default charities are kinda insignificant, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case.
Update 1:
So, it seems Humble officially getting rid of sliders now in exchange for an "extra to charity" option, which increases charity percentage from 5 to 15. I don't know how it'll work in case of a few charities present. I guess you'll be forced to support the charity you are not interested in. It was good while it lasted. Humble continues to sink further it seems... It sucks.
Update 2:
It seems Humble Bundle reversed this decision. I can confirm that sliders are back on all bundles. At least for now.
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