That's what I'm trying to figure out, if people are unhappy because it was in the freedom bundle, or because they think it's not a good enough game. A lot of people seem really pissed with this unlock. The thing is, not everybody dropped $30 on the Freedom bundle. It's kind of an in-between situation. Yes, it was in a bundle, but it wasn't a regular bundle that very, very many people could have been expected to buy. To say it was bundled is almost misleading, because it was a premium sort of bundle. What I mean is, I think a lot of people will be happy to get the witness because they didn't buy the freedom bundle. A certain proportion of monthly subscribers always already has the early unlock. But, yes, that proportion will probably be higher than ever this time around.

It's not a great situation, I agree. I think the $5 credit is actually pretty good compensation, but a little low. I'm far more pissed about not getting Subnautica in the Freedom bundle, though, and I've been making sure not to give Humble any tip/share of regular bundle purchases, because I don't know when I'm going to get over that.

Also, The Witness's stupid "choose Steam OR drm-free" option is stupid. Or maybe it's smart, but not consumer-friendly.

You are correct my friend =)

From the small amount of time I had to try out The Witness (Steams 2 hour refund rule) I enjoyed Talos Principle a LOT more then The Witness. For me, I didn't like the simplicity of the way the puzzles looked in The Witness, ie you have the little square thing and you move through the mazes with your "curser" or whatever. And from what I remember seeing of The Witness when it was released, it wouldn't change much. I'm sure it's a decent game, with some challenging puzzles, but Talos Principle was a lot more fun for me. It's difficult to describe, but it seemed a bit more interactive because you actually had to carry around and place shit etc. Makes me want to do another playthrough now :3

The main difference between The Talos Principle and The Witness for me is that the latter doesn't follow regular game conventions. Most games like The Talos Principle and the Portal games follows the format of teaching the player something, then making sure they know it, before using it in an actual puzzle. Basically, making sure the player knows what they need to know before allowing them to progress further.

The Witness doesn't do that though. It just throws stuff at you and you miss something or interpret it the wrong way... you're basically out of luck. Sure, it's open-world and you can go somewhere else if you're stuck on a particular puzzle but I found the whole thing to be frustrating to no end.

It reminded me of how old-school point-n-click adventure games used to be. You could sometimes miss an item at the start of the game, that you needed to solve something at the end, leaving you lost as what to do. In The Witness, it's not items you miss but knowledge about how to solve certain types of puzzles... and it's even more frustrating and way easier to miss.

That does sound like how I would describe games :v

Personally, I didn't know any of the games beforehand. From quickly researching them I'm also not really interested in any of them.
I'm still not sure if I'll activate any of it on my steam or if I'll give them all away.
But I heard a lot of people liked this monthly, so I wouldn't say it was a bad one. Just probably not the one for me ^^

:) As you can see, the counter is only there when the "month" is almost over.

Own it and have given it away in the past ;-;

You usually can click those anyway although they are greyed out ;)