On a scale from -5 to +5, how do you rate this news?
"If it's not broken, don't fix it," said Galbraith, who explained that IGN started looking to make a deal like this nearly a year ago. "The idea is just to feed them with the resources they need to keep doing what they're doing."
"We want to stick to the fundamentals in the short term. We don't want to disrupt anything we're doing right already," added Graham. "Because of the shared vision and overlap of our customer bases, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities."
Let's hope so.
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Will be watching carefully and see how situation develops in the upcoming years.
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Being acquired by a larger company always sets off alarmbells, but so long as they can avoid executive meddling then this might actually be a positive change given they'll have the backing to make more ambitious changes. So long as they retain enough autonomy, this might be a prelude to something good.
The change resistant part of me worries about the potential for something bad though.
Fingers crossed, eh?
Voted zero for "this could go either way"
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If there is no signed agreement, the words mean nothing.
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This is what every company says during an acquisition. It's always a lie.
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and "in the short term" says quite a lot. we rarely read something such as "yeah we bought them now we gonna rip your wallets off so hard with our cheap marketing tactics so you'll lose in quality and we'll gain in money lol owned"
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I voted +5 indeed.
HB is my biggest account of drm sw at the moment, way more than gog, and it seems to me that the merger will give HB a greater muscle to survive in the future.
I don't want to massively download all my stuff like I had to do with desura.
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my ratio isn't good for mergers / acquisitions of companies i do business with.
times it made things worse for me: 4
times it made things better for me: 0
times it made very little difference: 1
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This just in: Humble Bundle is the best distributer of games on the internet 10/10 just like all of our reviews that were in no way paid for -IGN
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Now IGN can just cut out the middleman: pay devs to make games, publish the games, and then post reviews of them.
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Um, not seeing a lot of good coming from this... sigh :-(
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Sadly I have to agree. Can't think of any acquisition that turned out to be good for customers in the end. Then again I have no clue how things would have turned out without the acquisition. It's probably confirmation bias and general negativity forming my outlook on this :P
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Can't think of any acquisition that turned out to be good for customers in the end.
Disney getting Marvel?
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Wasn't it after the Disney acquisition that the pissing match with Sony, Fox and etc over movie and game rights started?
They did pull all the X-men from the last Marvel vs Capcom after all.
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Well, I guess that's one way of thinking it.
While I didn't think much of it at the time, (most likely didn't care and not aware what a shared universe even is) I was just thinking that it's a very successful thing now. Even though I heard some people were very worried about it back then.
Also, just the first thing that came to my mind while trying to think of an example.
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The problem with Disney is that everyone knows they're capable of making great movies when they want to, but everyone also knows that their thirst for complete IP control can get ridiculously out of hand and lead them to such absurdities like fabricated escarcity of retail copies of certain movies to control the price. They act like a frigging evil empire sometimes.
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+1 to this.
And I'm probably in a minority on my dislike of Disney's Star Wars movies, but... having read a lot of SW novels as a teenager and then having them essentially throw out all the novels as non-canon while then turning around and taking heavily from the worst elements...let's just say that in my mind, there are only 3 real Star Wars movies and they were all released prior to 1985. IMHO If they were going to grab anything from the novels, they would have been better just doing a series based off Anderson's Jedi Academy series or better yet Zahn's Admiral Thrawn series.
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I was not even aware they bought Marvel, if that's the case. I figured it was just a movie rights kind of thing.
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It may not be as bad as it sounds, but for now...
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No. You see it was a reference to IGN hailing a variety of things as '10/10 game of the year' that clearly weren't, presumably as a result of certain incentives. It wasn't the best attempt at satire but I don't think it would have worked at all had I not stuck to the fundamental device of calling something 'GOTY' that wasn't.
Additionally I think calling something a '10/10 announcement of the year announcement' would have just looked weird. And although I'm sure plenty of people missed the point anyway just going with '10/10 announcement of the year' might have led even more people to believe that I was being serious and actually thought it was a good announcement.
In hindsight and after a certain amount of consideration I feel that like many of my examples of shitposting there is plenty of room for potential improvement, but I am sure I didn't mean 'AOTY'.
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I don't think they can get much bigger, they already got most publishers on board at least once, the only ones left are the ones that won't bundle their stuff no matter what like Activision/Blizzard.
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Oh, they did. One provided a demo version of a multiplayer half of their game as a prime early unlock reveal for one month, the other just now added a bunch of cheap in-game micro-transaction items for the current early unlock. But now the two worst Western publishers can say they did in fact mingle in the bundling scene.
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Yeah, now I remember. I guess it just didn't count as "bundled" in my mind :P
By the way, aren't those two basically the same company?
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Activision/Blizzard is. Bethesda is a different company though.
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Oh, he was talking about Bethesda, my bad :P
But yeah, I don't see any main-line Elder Scrolls or Fallout in a bundle any time soon (except if said bundle goes for $20 or so).
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i was on the fence about staying subbed. hoping for a good game when its out but after this i know the bundle with it be total shit.
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" as long as they do what they are saying."
But whenever has THAT been the case?
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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.
- Every acquiring company ever
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Haha yeah. I was about to quote the same thing. Give it 2 or 3 years and the heads will start to roll. :P
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I´d say we have about 1 year of great humble bundle times ahead of us before it starts getting worse..
Because those profits NEED to be maximised..
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ofcourse they now say they wont touch the concept, don't want to lose the users straight away. and then 6 months or 1 year down the line they'll start singing another tune slowly creeping in with more small changes that will undoubtedly fuck up what made humble bundle great.
it's great time for alternative bundle sites to step up to the plate to be able to take over the place once humble bundle goes to shit.
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+1 to the first part. But it's quite unlikely that anybody will step up to fill HB's position. Years ago last.fm was revolutionizing the radio business and was miles ahead of any other radio site. CBS bought it, announced everything would stay the same. Last.fm was stripped of its functions step by step, until only a dead shell remained. Grooveshark, 8tracks and some other sites tried to fill the void. None ever reached the potential of last.fm, but they were all more or less destroyed by the music industry.
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oh noes, why did you have to bring this up? now I will cry myself to sleep membering(tm) my Last.FM profile :(
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last.fm was great before it got bought. but it was giving negatives during that period, so it wasn't sustainable. same way spotify still isn't despite all the hype. youtube seems to be the current replacement but it's a lot more volatile then last.fm that's for sure.
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You might be right, haven't read that they were in the reds at that time. Actually they were expanding their offices and staff before they were bought.
Anyway, their technical and social innovations were groundbreaking and the music industry made sure that there is no other site around to resume that path. That's the real tragedy here.
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they were doing same thing spotify is doing now, getting venture capital to pay their bubble, getting bigger but not sustainable. when the money starts running out they have to either sell the brand or get more funding, and if that fails they go burst like grooveshark etc did.
even youtube is rumoured to be in the reds, but google pays it couz it brings more traffic to their ads stuff and is important to their global strategy.
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I just hope 'alternative bundle sites' isn't G2A...would much rather see bundlestars or one of the others pick up the mantle if when IGN fucks up HUmble.
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Let's hope they don't change too much but there most probably will be some change along the line.
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"We want to stick to the fundamentals IN THE SHORT TERM."
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Coming up next:
Humble "Just Fuck My Shit Up" Bundle
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I think it's going to be more along the lines of...
Humble "Xbox One Live" Bundle Or PS Plus, whatever the hell the switch is going to call it's interwebz service...
IGN is going to make it to where it's no longer PC focused, I'd bet my left foot on it.
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To be fair, that's been happenning for quite some time now - we've had 2 Nintendo bundles and probably half a dozen Playstation ones. Personally I don't mind occasional console bundl butt I can see it going anywhere - from raising the minimum amount ($1) to actively selling bundles with premium content for f2p games or selling console bundles.
But things will definitely change.
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at this point, it's too early to decide.
This can go one of three ways:
1 - It's a true hands-off situation, where nothing changes but the ownership, IGN just take the profits generated by a stable business berkshire hathaway does this all the time
Hey, what gaming entity wouldn't want a fairly successful storefront? Especially one with a loyal customer base and actual subscribers?
2 - Humble can leverage IGN's resources. I'm not really sure what this entails, as Humble is already able to snag some really big names for their bundles. For the most part, it just means better marketing/awareness for new humble bundles, resulting in higher revenue and profit for the owners (now IGN) than was previously possible
3 - IGN starts meddling with Humble. This could lead to dictates that fundamentally change Humble, ruining the experience - or worse, IGN only bought Humble for the storefront, and before you know it the contents of the bundles get crappier and crappier while the price rises higher and higher.
My guess is that it's a combination of 1 & 2 - IGN will mostly just take in the profit, but will leverage their user base to steer more people to the marketplace (very profitable) and provide greater advertising for the bundles (more charity! more profitz!). Provided the money keeps rolling in from the store, everyone will be happy.
.... until...
new executives at IGN decide they want to up the profit and some dipstick decides to start meddling with Humble in the quest for a bigger bonus. They'll "shake things up" and ruin it. They'll probably start with changing the sliders on where your funds go to on a bundle purchase, then turn HB into another BundleStars, or worse, IndieGala!
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tbh I don't really see IGN allowing for example free payment distribution (like 100% charity 0% IGN tip 0% developers tip) in humble bundles. Especially as HB ran a lot on it's name - ppl were going to pay Humble because it was Humble, they are not neccessary going to pay IGN, And moment IGN see X% of people pays 0% to IGN they are sure to meddle with HB system to for example set "at least 25% to IGN and devs".
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i can see a proprietary Humble Bundle client coming in the future :P
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There already is one.
On Android, for their Mobile bundles & offerings. Where it's a lot less cancerous than other app stores so that's a good thing actually.
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The app could use an update though, at least last time I checked. It doesn't work on Android TV. Also, the distributed apps don't seem to be updated as frequently, if at all, as on Play store for example.
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I wouldn't mind if they do it like GOG did and it's not mandatory but instead only used for cloud saves, auto-updates and the like.
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I can guarantee it's not 0% - Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet) buys companies that are profitable and with good management in places - they don't want to have to change anything, just collect the profit.
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"We want to stick to the fundamentals in the short term."
Wonder what they will stick to in the medium and long term.
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One company buy another company to make profit. Or for patents. And as HB doesn't have patents, it will have to start generate more and more money for IGN.
Hence I don't think it's gonna end up well.
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generate more and more money for IGN
I think the core business of HB is to generate tax deductions rather than actual new income
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SO THIS IS WHERE SKANDA GOT THIS FROM!
you sir are a genius :p
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Taxes are a zero-sum game though, meaning in the end the taxpayers will foot the bill... Or to put it another way: on HB, you pay games twice: once when you buy them, and once when you pay your taxes
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News: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/307546/Humble_Bundle_has_been_acquired_by_media_giant_IGN.php
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.
Humble grew out of a bundle of indie games sold to raise money for charity in 2010, and in the seven years since it has raised over $100 million for charity. In a conversation today with Gamasutra, Humble cofounder John Graham and IGN executive VP Mitch Galbraith reiterated that IGN does not intend to change the way Humble does business.
"If it's not broken, don't fix it," said Galbraith, who explained that IGN started looking to make a deal like this nearly a year ago. "The idea is just to feed them with the resources they need to keep doing what they're doing."
"We want to stick to the fundamentals in the short term. We don't want to disrupt anything we're doing right already," added Graham. "Because of the shared vision and overlap of our customer bases, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities."
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