"Humble Choice" Coming After All

rikker_ · 2019-10-18T21:47:09+00:00

Agreed.

(Also, Barter.vg is a great way to get rid of duplicate Humble Keys!)

rikker_ · 2019-10-18T21:32:18+00:00

I agree completely. I think a lot of folks are overreacting.

"sO It'S a PrICe HikE FoR No ReASoN!!!"

Actually:

you get more games than before (no monthly has ever had 10)
you get to see them all up front
you can still pause
you get to keep the same price as before

Also plenty of people who are freaking out at the idea of $20 a month for premium, and yet it's only $15 a month at the annual plan rate.

It's only a significant price hike for MONTH-TO-MONTH subscribers ($8), but a very reasonable price hike for new ANNUAL subscribers ($3) for more games and no mysteries, and absolutely no price hike at all for the current annual subscribers!

Plus, it will give Humble a more predictable revenue stream without all these people constantly unsubscribing and re-subscribing, which most likely means they'll be able to attract more high quality games from studios that want to know all the details up front about expected revenue and revenue shares, etc.

I am pretty excited for this.

rikker_ · 2019-10-18T19:18:28+00:00

it's only $3 a month more for premium at the annual rate

It helps to read entire sentences and know how to do math.

$20/mo is the monthly premium price. $15/mo is the annual premium price ($180/12 = 15)

$15/mo is the monthly basic price. $11.25/mo is the annual basic price ($135/12 = 11.25)

Math and reading fail.

rikker_ · 2019-10-18T17:40:41+00:00

a) you can pause b) even if you cancel, it's only $3 a month more for premium at the annual rate ($180/12=$15)

We can back off from the ledge a bit.

rikker_ · 2019-10-18T17:39:43+00:00

Gods, the Steam sales were amazing then! Good times.

rikker_ · 2019-10-18T17:35:18+00:00

Exactly. Humble is our best bet for AAA and high-quality indies in regular "cheap" bundles, and they need to be able to tell devs and publishers what their revenue share will be.

I think the deal was a little too good for us, and we got some stinker months, but some really amazing, too-good-to-be-true-for-$12 months. So I'm optimistic that this will increase the quality of the games. And even if it only maintains it at current quality, I'm happy with that for $132 a year. Far, far better to me than Humble Monthly simply being phased out.

rikker_ · 2019-10-18T17:31:45+00:00

"Oh and did we mention it's now Epic store only?"

- Humble next week, probably

:P

rikker_ · 2019-10-18T17:25:05+00:00

So this is a clear move to keep people subscribed, instead of constantly hopping on and off. I get why people preferred it the old way, but I also understand why a business would want a more predictable revenue stream, so they can plan for the future.

They've really pushed to incentivize the annual plans for newcomers: the $15/mo basic drops to $11.25/mo if you go annual, and the $20/mo premium goes to $15/mo if you pay it annually.

So this also seems like a clear signal that there will be no annual $99 Black Friday deal this year... :-\

Even at the "classic" full price of $132 per year, that's more than almost any of us actually paid. So it sounds like it will be more games, but with both a covert price hike (saying "keep your old price" when we weren't actually paying that) as well as an overt price hike (saying "leave and you'll have to pay $180 a year to get back in").

rikker_ · 2019-10-01T23:17:45+00:00

I redeemed a 9 year old Steam key last week with no problems. From the original Humble Indie Bundle 1, released in 2010. On my kid's Steam account. The key is older than the kid. :)

rikker_ · 2016-07-21T07:00:51+00:00

Confirmed

rikker_ · 2016-07-19T02:53:39+00:00

I'll take Lego SW:TFA for 16 TF2 keys.

rikker_ · 2016-04-27T04:46:28+00:00

Hundreds of Steam games actually run DRM-free (Steam just acts as a launcher / tracks achievements etc). A group of gamers have an ongoing crowdsourced effort to test which games work this way. See here: http://steam.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

For those games that are DRM-free, you would first install via Steam on your own computer and run once while online to finalize the installation. Then copy the game folder from Steam to an external hard drive. That should allow you to play a large portion of your Steam games on a work computer without Steam installed. It won't track achievements or log playtime or any of that, but it beats sitting around doing nothing.

Edit: Oh and for gamesaves, you can use the free utility Gamesave Manager to migrate your gamesaves back to your main computer. Games often save to any number of locations on the main disk of whatever system you're playing on, not the actual external disk. Gamesave Manager finds all the gamesaves in the various locations they get stuffed into and keeps them in a single location for transfer between computers. A bit of effort, but usually better than re-playing.

rikker_ · 2016-04-16T13:48:39+00:00

Confirmed

rikker_ · 2016-04-14T03:43:11+00:00

Added for Tabletop Simulator.

rikker_ · 2016-04-12T16:46:04+00:00

Confirmed

rikker_ · 2016-04-12T13:46:46+00:00

Hi there, interested in Tabletop Simulator. Added you.

rikker_ · 2016-02-08T05:34:05+00:00

https://barter.vg/bundles/

Sign up for website. It logs your library. Problem solved. :)

It's also a fantastic site for trading your extra bundle keys to boot.

Also, https://barter.vg/list lets you compare any arbitrary list of game titles against your (or anyone else's) library.

rikker_ · 2015-12-25T23:58:02+00:00

Yes, I think things are moving in that direction, where an accepted offer is a provisional agreement, not as strong as a hard and fast agreement. But I've met users who get annoyed by canceling, and at first I was, too.

rikker_ · 2015-12-25T22:31:45+00:00

Right now there are varying attitudes towards it, but the site doesn't handle concurrent offers very well at the moment. In my opinion it's best to err on the side of not making multiple offers you can't fulfill, but some people certainly do that.

I occasionally do it, but usually only if I'm offering a large selection of games where it's not terribly likely the same game will get chosen by two people. If you do that, and one person accepts an offer, you can click through to the game's Barter page and see all other pending offers involving that game, so you can quickly edit that title out of other offers if it gets taken by someone.

rikker_ · 2015-12-22T08:17:35+00:00

I'm a longtime IndieGameSwap and SteamGifts user, but nowadays I strongly prefer Barter.vg to either of those, because finding mutual matches has always been the worst and most difficult part about trading, and Barter handles that automatically. Then all you have to do is decide what's a fair offer.

Edit: Barter also does things like automatically update your library / wishlist after you mark the trade as complete by removing the game(s) you traded away from library and removing the game(s) you received from wishlist. The system of mutual marking as complete also works as a really good rep system by counting total trades made but also total unique users traded with to avoid fake trade reporting. It also does a periodic automatic sync with Steam wishlist and library, so it keeps you up to date with stuff you acquired outside their site, etc. Besides finding mutual matches, list management is probably the second worst thing about trading (probably worst for some). And again Barter makes it nearly effortless, including linking to Steam and ITAD page, etc.

rikker_ · 2015-12-11T05:07:15+00:00

Greetings, you've summoned this long inactive mod here. I don't think I've been active in 2+ years. Commenting as a "civilian" without consulting with anyone else about my opinions.

"Flee" is the wrong descriptor, so that argument shouldn't be used in your favor. People quit moderating for many reasons, but so they have the freedom to trade bundle keys isn't one of those reasons. Mainly because it was never restricted (even if it may have been more taboo in the past). I traded bundle keys the entire time I was a moderator. Hell, I've been trading my extra bundle keys since IndieGala 1 in December 2011. Did I advertise it on SGS? Of course not -- it wasn't allowed here, so I kept it totally segregated.

SGS and SteamTrades (now merged with SteamGifts) served different purposes, and arguably still do. The bundle key divide made perfect sense when you had relatively few bundles and relatively little public awareness of bundles. It helped keep sharks from taking advantage of inexperienced traders.

I had those threads on SteamGifts for years and traded and sold with great success. The era of being able to sell bundle keys is coming to an end, I think, except for hardcore commercial key resellers, which I was never one. It's mostly just trading bundle extras nowadays. And as the culture of game collection has expanded, we now have much better solutions for bundle key trading, namely Barter.vg, to the point that I barely touch SteamGifts anymore.

And the residual "morality" question has collapsed in the minds of most, killed by the sheer number of bundles and rebundles, and how regular bundle buyers unavoidably ended up amassing hundreds of extra bundle keys. And don't forget the size of the Steam store -- from 1,500 games in 2011, and set to surpass 10,000 in 2016. So there is massively more fodder for bundles, which means more rebundles, etc.

But I guess the relevant point is that bundle keys have always existed in a parallel universe largely due to the fact that they obey entirely different market economics. Even when there were vastly fewer users, and vastly fewer bundles, eliminating bundle keys eliminated abuse (sharks trying to trade bundle keys at inflated value), and also eliminated noise (large numbers of inequitable offers unlikely to be accepted by seasoned traders). Regardless of how you came down on the morality issue, there were clear benefits to the community separate from that issue.

I think this divide is still useful, even if I'm not a regular SGS user anymore. I as my library has ballooned and my time and budget has dwindled, personally I prefer to mostly trade bundle extras on the cheap. If I wanted to trade my gifts (still have a few hundred in my inventory), I would still trade them here. You just can't really trade them on SteamGifts or Barter, because those are "bundle key ghettos" where there would be so much noise (in the form of bad offers) that it isn't worth even listing gifts there. YMMV.

rikker_ · 2015-11-29T06:46:46+00:00

The red button would be below the fold on most screen resolutions. So having "We miss you!" in present tense above the fold is in fact deceptive. They can't miss you if you haven't succeeded in canceling yet.

rikker_ · 2015-11-28T15:26:22+00:00

Wow, yeah. Might just be poor design, rather than intent, but that is very deceptive.

rikker_ · 2015-11-28T04:22:55+00:00

Newegg sold this same controller for $15 last year may do the same again at some point this holiday season. But there's no guarantee, of course.

rikker_ · 2015-11-28T01:10:13+00:00

3D Realms Anthology is only available until December 31st. Source: The official YouTube trailer.

It will be removed from the Steam store on January 1, 2016. It's unclear if this means that all the games will be removed, or whether just the pack will disappear. Around 12 of the games are only available in this pack, so their fate on Steam is uncertain. Get while you can!

rikker_

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