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Humble Bundle
IGN offered Jeff Rosen and John Graham fuck-you money for their name and store front. So they took it and said "fuck you" to their customers and their independent mission of channeling the desire for games into charitable giving.
This is the saddest thing that has happened in gaming this year. I expect anti-consumer innovations from EA, Activision, and the rest. But this cuts to the quick.
There's definitely no conflict of interest in a review site owning a game storefront, right? No good can come of this.
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There's definitely no conflict of interest in a review site owning a game storefront, right?
Owning a storefront ? Not the biggest conflict of interest.
But Humble is also in the publisher business these days. And a review site owing a publisher is a lot more dodgy. Any review by IGN of any game that Humble helped publish will be automatically suspect, unless IGN can prove (in both legal and moral sense) that the 2 branches of business operate independently of eachother.
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I agree that's a genuine issue, and one that will only get worse going forward, though the number and prestige of the games they've published is minimal right now. I was thinking specifically of the ways that publishers can schmooze or alienate reviewers (e.g., free copies or not, embargoes or not, exclusive previews or not, event access or not) and in general affect their ability to generate content that produces ad revenue, and the corresponding ways in which a storefront has the discretion to direct customers' attention to certain games on the website (or not), offer certain games for sale (or not), include those games in bundles (or not), advertise games in promotions or sales (or not), and so forth.
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An interesting article on the topic for some context: Why Humble Bundle Sold Out Itself and Over 100 Million Customers.
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"If Humble Bundle or substantially all of its assets are acquired, or in the unlikely event that Humble Bundle goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of Humble Bundle may continue to use your Personal Information as set forth in this policy."
Wow,basically they just sold our data to IGN.
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When bigger companies buy smaller ones, it usually changes them, and sadly often in a bad way for what I've seen. We'll see how it turns, who knows, IGN may let HB stay HB and not interfere too much. Or HB may be eviscerated like Bioware was, who knows
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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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