Humble Bundle Stops Purchasers From Giving Full Payment To Charity (arstechnica.com) 56
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since the first Humble Indie Bundle launched to much acclaim in 2010, users have been able to allocate up to 100 percent of a bundle's pay-what-you-want purchase price to Humble's partner charities. That option will be going away in mid-July as the company institutes a new 15 to 30 percent minimum cut that will go to the storefront itself. If that new policy sounds familiar, it's probably because of a test Humble Bundle in April that hid the charity sliders from some customers as a form of early user testing. In light of negative feedback, Humble Bundle apologized for not being "more proactive in communicating the test." But at the time, the company also said it was planning to limit total charity donations to 15 percent of the user-set purchase price in the near future. By May, though, Humble Bundle backtracked and said it was leaving the charity sliders intact and turning them back on for all customers "while we take more time to review feedback and consider sliders and the importance of customization for purchases on bundle pages in the long term."
Today, that review seems to be over, and Humble Bundle has once again decided to set limits on the proportion of payments users can allocate to charity (though at a higher level than it publicly mulled back in April). In a blog post Thursday, the Humble Bundle team attributed the 15 to 30 percent minimum store cut (which will vary from bundle to bundle) to the fact that "the PC storefront landscape has changed significantly since we first launched bundles in 2010, and we have to continue to evolve with it to stay on mission." Humble Bundle says customers can still adjust their specific charitable giving within these new limits, and on-screen sliders will make any minimums clear. The team also argues that ensuring Humble Bundle itself makes some money from every bundle sale will "[let] us continue to invest in more exciting content so we can keep growing the Humble community, which will ultimately drive more donations for charitable causes."
Today, that review seems to be over, and Humble Bundle has once again decided to set limits on the proportion of payments users can allocate to charity (though at a higher level than it publicly mulled back in April). In a blog post Thursday, the Humble Bundle team attributed the 15 to 30 percent minimum store cut (which will vary from bundle to bundle) to the fact that "the PC storefront landscape has changed significantly since we first launched bundles in 2010, and we have to continue to evolve with it to stay on mission." Humble Bundle says customers can still adjust their specific charitable giving within these new limits, and on-screen sliders will make any minimums clear. The team also argues that ensuring Humble Bundle itself makes some money from every bundle sale will "[let] us continue to invest in more exciting content so we can keep growing the Humble community, which will ultimately drive more donations for charitable causes."
It is very common to see this... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is very common to see this happening with many projects or ventures which started as open source, freeware or similar, as soon as they realize that they acquired a potential customer base.
Of the top of my head, the only organization and/or project that has not yet succumbed to such temptation is the Apache Software Foundation although there might be others...
Re:It is very common to see this... (Score:5, Insightful)
At what point in HBs [wikipedia.org] existence have they NOT been a business?
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or ventures which started as open source, freeware or similar
Let's pretend businesses that put an emphasis on giving to charities then later cut the margins given to charities once money starts to flow in more importantly and they realize how much they could grab is included in: "similar". :)
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Who (Ziff-Davis) said:
Clever wording, you could say altering the charitable donation is not fundamentally changing the way they do business but then they could change a heck of a lot and still not fundamentally change the way they do business.
Still a crappy change and I bet it'll make very little difference to the bottom line.
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I'm not sure I'd call it a crappy change... at some point a business (or even a non-profit, though this isn't one) has to bring in enough money to cover their costs. Hosting costs money. Employee wages cost money. If everyone moves the slider to "100% to charity" that leaves 0% to cover operating costs. Saying "you may now only move the slider to "70% to charity" doesn't seem unreasonable. What other businesses give 70% of *revenue* (not profits) to charity? In most lines of business, at least the fir
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Why bother with such a pointless straw man?
I'm going to copy-paste what I said already:
So if they can afford to change their take on bundles from 30% to 5% they WTF can't they leave it
Re:It is very common to see this... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would suggest that Blender did the complete opposite - it changed from proprietary to open source, and is now infinitely better because of that.
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Re: It is very common to see this... (Score:3)
So we should make games so complex they require instructions.
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The only reason they open-sourced it is because the company went bankrupt trying to sell it. It was a real piece of shit back then. The user interface was god-awful (nearly impossible to use) and I don't imagine the code was much better. There were good reasons why it failed in the marketplace.
They open-sourced it as a last ditch effort to keep it alive which brought in a ton of new and better talent that set to work fixing the many issues that plagued it.
The interface is a lot better today.
(still, Mirai [wikipedia.org] ha
Re:It is very common to see this... (Score:4, Insightful)
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The problem with the changes, for me, is that the
Re:It is very common to see this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem I have is with the presentation.
If you want to make profit, make profit. That's what most companies out there are doing, and there's no shame attached with wanting to make a profit.
If you want to do charity work, do charity work. It's laudable and I am very likely supportive if the charity is even remotely something I could see as beneficial for the society.
If you make profit while claiming to do charity, we're getting to a point where you are getting close enough to a con job that it gets uncomfortable for me.
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I used to think exactly like this. Felt the same way as you. But then someone sent me this TED Talk and I've changed my mind.
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Oh for crying out loud. Missed the link: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong
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Don't worry, I didn't miss your missing the link, and won't be clicking it now that you've provided it.
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Again, it depends on the presentation. Be upfront about it, tell me about it and be honest about it. But if I find out that I pay 100 bucks for a pair that's worth 50 and the ones that you donate are some kind of rejects from second hand markets, we have a problem.
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Correct, I wouldn't.
If I want to donate, I'll donate. There's no need to involve a sock company.
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Of the top of my head, the only organization and/or project that has not yet succumbed to such temptation is the Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Foundation, GNU, Etc, are non-profit entities dedicated to open source, so that makes sense. Humble was always a normal business with charity donations as a "hook" or marketing selling point for their products.
Once a business have reached a certain level of critical mass, then it makes more financial sense to start cutting back on the hook, because they
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The Apache Software Foundation IS ITSELF a charity. They get over $2 million of donations per year, that's how they can carry on. I am not sure how Humble Bundle is supposed to survive if they don't make enough money.
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I'm shocked that people don't freely give away everything they work hard for. What kind of a society do we live in where people expect to be paid for their efforts. Shocking!
Why don't we cut off the ASF from donations and then see how long it takes before they monetise what they do. Or maybe you think the people working there can buy food and pay rent using homes and dreams?
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It is very common to see this happening with many projects or ventures which started as open source, freeware or similar, as soon as they realize that they acquired a potential customer base.
Of the top of my head, the only organization and/or project that has not yet succumbed to such temptation is the Apache Software Foundation although there might be others...
GNU?
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See Cpanel. It went from being relatively cheap, to now damagingly expensive which has resulted in hosts using it consolidating servers to reduce the amount of pointless licenses.
Not Humble (Score:1)
Re:Not Humble (Score:4, Insightful)
Only thing being taken away is the notion one can cut the arranger of the bundle out of the deal.
Lol read what you wrote when you sober up (Score:1, Interesting)
> I'd rather donate my time/possessions/money directly in people in need rather than use charities ... shame on Humble Bundle for taking that choice away from its customers
You like to give things directly to people in need, rather than going through any organization. Okay, that's fine. (Sometimes wasteful, but that's your choice).
And Humble Bumble took away your ability to "give directly to people in need rather than use charities"? Really?
How's exactly, did Humble Bumble take away your ability to give
Re:Lol read what you wrote when you sober up (Score:4)
And don't do through the charity muggers either. The charity muggers don't work for the charity and aren't volunteers. They work for agencies that purport to help charities but the charity gets next to nothing by the time all those muggers and admins have been paid.
And fuck U2 for their "awareness" charity that does nothing. We're plenty aware, thanks. Give the fucking money to the people doing the work.
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Even so, it's better to give to the charity directly than through yet another entity that takes a slice. I don't get why people have to get "something back" when they give to charity - just give the money.
Yeah, I hate that. The university which employs me has an annual charity drive in the fall. Every year, there's all this pressure to give to charity through the university - and they seem to try to turn it into a competition between departments, including having a point person in each department whose job it is to get people to participate.
I've gotten into arguments with these people, saying things like "I already give to Habitat for Humanity" (just picking one group for an example). They invariably come ba
Not quite so straight forward (Score:2)
I think your argument can be challenged as too individualist. Yes, we should all be giving to charity. The reality is that much of the unthinking lump whom we are surrounded by don't. An employer based drive that encourages more of its employees to start giving to charity because they see their colleagues doing so through the employer may be productive, and thus for us to do so through the employer may stampede some into realising they should do likewise.
Never assume that people think about things unless pu
Re: Lol read what you wrote when you sober up (Score:2)
I personally think it just comes down to the fact that the motivations for giving to charity vary person to person, and may even be situational. Or, put another way, there is no single way that people are motivated to give.
I know little about Humble Bundle, but considering that businesses like Omaze seem to be thriving by providing nothing but an entry into a lottery, shows me that the motivation for giving could even be attributed to nothing other than a vague hope of getting something in return, as long
Modulo advertising and fundraising costs, diligenc (Score:2)
> Even so, it's better to give to the charity directly than through yet another entity that takes a slice.
Agreed - if you already know exactly where you want all your money to go, and they are set up to do all the accounting and legal/tax filing and requirements.
The United Way supports a ton of local charities that you won't see TV commercials for, because the charity is focused on helping people, not making TV ads to raise funds. If you look at your local United Way site you may find a dozen organizatio
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but shame on Humble Bundle for taking that choice away from its customers
Yes shame on Humble Bundle for not gifting games out of the goodness of their heart and donating all of the proceeds to charity. How dare they expect to be paid for providing a product / service. Don't they know that food is free, rent is free, server space is free? Their attempts to monetise what they do is sickening. Clearly by taking a tiny cut they are very much the same as the world's wealthiest company and one that enjoys the largest profit margin on their products in the industry.
Shame on them!
SHAME
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I'm not going to say shame on them.
But providing that choice was what made them interesting. Now they're much less interesting.
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You still have most of your choice. Now the choice just covers their server costs rather than letting you leech of them. Maybe they should instead label it as you can donate 100% of our profit margin instead. I'm willing to bet you'll find even that is more than 15% minimum cut they are currently using that "makes them less interesting".
A group voluntarily bankrupting themselves is interesting in the same way as watching a russian roulette player is interesting. I would have a morbid curiosity if it weren't
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It's not a donation though - you're receiving something in return.
This is effectively a store where you can choose to allocate a large portion of the revenue to charity. They're not even removing that ability but at the end of the day it takes money to keep a storefront operating and content available. If they're not getting sufficient revenue under the voluntary system then they need to adjust.
More for me, less for you. (Score:2)
The team also argues that ensuring Humble Bundle itself makes some money from every bundle sale will "[let] us continue to invest in more exciting content so we can keep growing the Humble community, which will ultimately drive more donations for charitable causes."
Quite a few have been pointing this out although not always happy with the defaults which take a very big chunk out instead of a minimum.
they have a point (Score:3)
Steam is, well, steam-rolling the industry of online game delivery. Humble Bundle needs to offer equivalent or near-equivant features to stay competative, and that takes money. /dotter already pointed out, if it's not convenient to use their services, one can always just go with Steam for games and make a charitable donation separately.
As one
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Humble isn't in competition with Steam though. For 90% of the games now offered in Humble bundles you need to go through Steam to access them.
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Humble Bundle needs to offer equivalent or near-equivant features to stay competative
They do offer this. That is part of what makes Steam so good and what makes Epic games a bunch of lying sacks of shit. Steam takes a 0% cut of Steam Keys sold through other means. When developers sign with Humble Bundle they sell Steam Keys. You get all of the benefits of Steam plus the feel good of the Humble Bundle donation, plus the discount from the bundle itself.
Those BASTARDS! (Score:1)
This is funny. I'd probably do something like this (Score:4, Interesting)
With that in mind, and looking at the change that they tried to implement in April, it seems reasonable to guess that they're struggling to get games publishers to sign on. Publishers probably aren't seeing the returns that they expect. A change is needed, but the funny thing is the community response. The change in April gave 80-85% to publishers, 5-15% to charity, and only 5-10% for Humble itself. That's down from their default take of 30%, but an awful lot of people howled about this and called them "greedy." So they reneged.
Now we have this. I'm not sure how or whether this appeals to publishers, but I can certainly see this from Humble's perspective. They already floated a deal where they reduced their own cut by about as much as is probably feasible and people acted like the sky was falling. So... fuck it.
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So if they can afford to change their take on bundles from 30% to 5% they WTF can't they leave it at 10 to 15% default and allow a small minority to occasionally alter the distribution, it's one of the things that made the site a fun and interesting place to buy from. This make
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Humble has been pursuing AAA publishers instead of indies and shifting more and more into just acting as a front for Steam purchases.
And that's why lots of people don't care about them anymore.
I bought a couple of bundles back when they were full of interesting indie games I never heard about and probably - given that quality is a hit-and-miss game in the indie scene - wouldn't have forked money over for individually. But in a bundle - if 2-3 are shit, the 1-2 good ones will make up for it.
And there were good ones. Really good ones.
And it was great for the indie devs as well, who would have never gotten that amount of exposure by themsel
Slashdot commenters are off the rails (Score:3, Insightful)
At the time of writing all the up-voted comments somehow seem to think that Humble's existence should be for free, and that I guess games, server costs, and people's time as well as the desire to eat and put a roof over people's heads are all free.
Lots of comparisons to projects which survive directly from donations, something which Humble doesn't get.
Lots of comparisons to non-profits, something which Humble is not..
Lots of comparisons to Apple... which....
No seriously did Slashdot collectively not take its meds this morning?
Charity was only ever marketing schtick (Score:4, Informative)
These days Humble Bundle is far more mercenary and I think the publishers are too. Probably the two went hand in hand down that road - publishers fed up with being taken for a ride and Humble Bundle having to adapt to those changes in how they sell bundles and the prices they sell them for. Most of their bundles these days are garbage being either overpriced and/or underwhelming.
Probably why they're leaning more on stuff like Humble Choice but even there the rot is evident. In some months Epic are giving better games away for free than Humble would have people pay for. And Humble are absolute dicks when it comes to autorenewing subscriptions without asking and making it hard to cancel or pause a sub.
Even the default split is astronomically HB heavy (Score:2)
I took a look at a bundle yesterday and it didn't appear the ability to put everything to charity had yet been removed, but when I looked at the default split, it was overwhelmingly weighted in favor of Humble Bundle. It was something like 90% HB, 7% publisher, 3% charity. Given how Humble Bundle started, that's a major shift. I'm not sure the Humble Bundle model actually makes much sense any longer under ZD's Humble. They still push the optics but the defaults don't really respect those optics at all. I th
Bring back DRM free non-Steam bundles. (Score:2)
I haven't bought a bundle from Humble since they stopped providing true DRM free downloadable programs. Every bundle I have seen recently has included mostly games that had to be accessed via Steam. There are few if any games that are DRM free downloads like the original bundles. It just isn't worth it to me to purchase these bundles even if I could give 100% to the charity so I definitely won't be purchasing them if I am forced to give Humble 15%.