Anyone have the feeling that bundles are becoming the opposite of what they were supposed to be?

waiting for "ripoff's triple A bundle - get 5 triple A titles for the price of 10! and of course, 1% will be spend in charity projects!

help those little hungry kids and more importantly those even more hungry game devs!"

i get the feeling that the glorious and generous name of game bundles will be thrown into the dirt by greedyness sooner or later.

i was seriously surprised when bundles just became like an usual thing, when the hunble thq bundle came i was like "Oh my goodness, this is awesome, really good event, must be a once in a lifetime opportunity"
but now, the magic is just lost with like 8 bundles per week

"but how many of them can you actually play?"

Eventually, all of them that interest me.

"that most of them pay only $1"

Nope, looking at the data on the Humble site proves this wrong.

Average purchase: $5.64

Companies nor Indies lost in the bundles, the games they send into bundles are games that reached:

development cost + estimated earnings = profitable game

They never lose, always win after a point that cost+earning calculations reach the estimated neccesary amounts.

That's why for example, Double Fine went into bundle so fast, because they covered the cost with the kickstarter, everything else is x=(profit - sever bandwith cost).

Once you paid a developer team + staff + maketing + everything involved in the game development, your game start giving you profits, you don't have a "maintainance cost" unless you are patching or updating and server bandwith, which, I'm sure they've already calculated into the game cost.

The only way they lose money is by piracy, I prefer to throw a dollar into this bundles than install a trojan/virus with a cracked game. That dollar worth my security.

Every bundle I've bought was played and I gave at least 95% of the money to charity. Not sure about other people, but I only buy a bundle if I'm positively sure I'll play the games. Anyways, even knowing most games will sometime be in a bundle of sorts, I still buy them on 75% off sales (when I have the money too, obviously), so I don't see bundles as a bad thing for the industry.

Where are these weekly/daily bundles everyone is mentioning? Besides the Humble Bundle I can't think of any others.

I think that ultimately bundles are a good thing.

Bundles really do pull in a big profit for the games that are in them. It might be counterintuitive, but you gotta realize that a ton of the people who buy a bundle are probably only buying it for one or two games (they may even be people who would never buy any of the games normally, but can't resist the bargain of getting them all at once!) Companies don't keep putting their games into bundles because they feel generous; they do it because it works for them financially.

This also allows gamers to build up a large library of games, giving them a lot more freedom to play random things whenever they want.

Actually, humblebundles weren't for boosting sales they were primarily for child's play charity fund raising. Humblebundle is awesome. It's win, win, win...except for the guys who abused it early and only paid a penny.

Oddly enough... alan wake is among the best bundles I've seen, seemed to be quite popular, though the same game on for 3 bucks more for the bundle is the top game on steam right now, 3 people on my friend's list bought it off steam.

Yeah, the quality has went down... But BundleStars still have kinda good! :)

CHARITY OPPORTUNITIES!!!!!

All transactions follow the rules of economics. The Humble Bundle was charitable, yes, but it was also successful in a financial sense. Therefore, it makes financial sense to copy the sales model. Capitalism for the win.

I can't claim that bundles were supposed to be one thing or another, but I agree that my perception of them has changed. Initially they were more about finding out about games I haven't heard of before. This part is still there, but now bundles have a lot more games which I'm familiar with or even bought already, and I'm starting to think more along the lines of "what a waste of money that was."

screw charity my humble bundle money goes to the devs and a bit goes to HB

steamgiftsIs ready for the big ho

Companies wouldn't be pumping out these bundles if it didn't benefit them. They're a quick cash infusion for companies and usually primarily include games that have been out for a while anyways. It's fair to say that Telltale is going to raise over $1 million in their weekly sale, and that's just for them, not including the portion going to charity of the humble tip. Before that with the Alan Wake bundle and Double Fine...they're basically using them as Kickstarters only the reward is their older titles.

It might be less profitable for smaller companies because they have to bundle their games with ones from other indie developers (thus forcing them to split the pot), but I imagine those companies are also after the exposure.

So if game developers like them (which they must for them to be growing in popularity) and they result in consumers having the option of cheaper games, I don't really see the downside. Yes, it might have moved from being special to a common business practice, but that's what happens when a new concept works.

I won't ever (I mean never ever) buy a game starting from 30$/E and more expensive. So the makers are unable to make profit on me at such stakes. When the game gets into bundle or another price cut - I'll take it.
So it's a win-win. Even when it's 15, 10 or 5 bucks - it's a profit for developers, they would not get otherwise.
Another thing is, if new games have adequate prices to the market. Here, in Poland it's much of opposite... Bundles are remedy in this case.

What's the problem? - Finally people can get games cheaper and actually play them. For people that have less money it's a great deal - they won't even think of downloading pirate versions of games, which is a very common thing in my country.

I am very glad I can support charity/devs/ppl that make bundles happen and also have a profit myself. It's just amazing.
The point you reach is - you have enough money to just give a dolar and don't even care - that's only your opinion games losing value.
In reality bundles last a week or two - then a lot people have it but others that didn't buy bundles - don't.

In conclusion - Bundles are great ways to support both devs and charity.
Games losing value is personal feeling only as it is.
If you don't care about charity OR you are not anyhow rich - you give minimum ammount to get bundles. (Nothing wrong with that)
That's how the system works - and it works fine - everyone knew how people might buy bundles as they created this system.

"Oh, so people stopped talking about 'Hotline Miami' that came out a few months ago?" "LET'S RUIN ALL OF OUR POSSIBLE SALES AND TURN IT INTO AN UNDERRATED GAME PEOPLE TRADE FOR 0.1$!"

i wouldnt be surprised if none of the money goes anywhere, except to the owners of the website.
not at humblebundle of course, but at most of the other copycat pages.

I agree 100% with OP

Honestly, I hate the fact that there is a Telltale Bundle. I would have liked it more if more games were BTA and they got more money.

Nope. More bundles mean more exposure, more exposure means more people playing their stuff. We may be reaching bundle saturation, but so far I'd say it is not THERE yet. The games being more accessible is a good thing.

For me it's rgeat that there are many bundles. i enjoy RTS,RPG and FPSs. any games out of these genres i won't buy for a high price point since i'll probably not play them much. however with bundles i can buy more weird and diferent games for just a few dollars. that not only allows me to try new genres but also gives me knowledge of what i like.