The people paying that amount could already own the games, they could already donate to charity. This is pay what you want for a reason, a large portion of people purchase just because it's a donation thing. If someone has a spare $5 why don't they spend it here? It isn't pathetic, it's better than nothing.
These deals tap into the reservoir of people who aren't invested enough in the games to pay full price (I forget the exact term for that), and these games certainly aren't new, and each has been on sale on Steam at least once so the people who were going to buy for full price likely already have.
This is my first time buying one of these bundles. I started to play games again this week, so I figured "what the hell?" I paid the pre-selected $1 above-average payment for this bundle.
If I have a great time with these games, I will probably double my payment next time. If I don't, I probably won't buy the next bundle at all. Either way, I can get my feet wet again with games with a low barrier-to-entry price.
Also, let's not forget that the cost of production of digital goods is essentially $0, and you could view this as an alternate channel for game developers to make some extra sales while getting people pumped about their future games.
Don't forget you can increase your payment for this bundle if you really enjoy them.
Also, I wouldn't write off the next bundle if this one doesn't suit your fancy. In my opinion the games in this bundle are more casual than games in previous bundles (I wouldn't consider Aquaria, Revenge of the Titans, Penumbra, et al. to be all that casual anyway).
Not that you need to worry about the next bundle at this point X3
I'm not speaking of price discrimination at all. That would be Valve releasing a game at full price and then a week later putting it on sale for 25% off. This doesn't qualify as price discrimination because they're games that have been around. The value for buying earlier is that you've owned it and had the chance to use it reasonably longer than everyone who is getting it now.
I'm speaking of the specific market of fence-sitters who may have pirated the games but in this case are willing to throw a couple bucks at the games. Those people who who you never would have gotten money from otherwise.
I don't think so. At the time of writing, they're close to a $100k in sales with many more days still to go. If you multiply that by the average developer share you'll end up above $10k per indie dev (that number also is going to go up significantly over the next days). That makes Humblebundle a nice bonus for developers who already invested their time into making these games. Equally important, it gives them exposure to an audience who might otherwise not have tried those games at all.
Wow, "3 hours ago" they were under $100k? They're at $235k now. $40k/hour in sales ain't too shabby. It's amazing watching the total-revenue number grow.
$26k in sales per dev (and counting) ain't too shabby either. Good on them.
Also, heh, how many names do you recognize out of the top 10 contributors list?
I already have three out of five of those games on steam, and I bet a lot of other people do too; they've been on sale enough times. It's also very early in the campaign; as I recall there were a number of 'high rollers' that donated very large amounts (IIRC, Notch donated over $10,000). Once they come in the average might go up a bit.
