I hope there will be another such event in the near future, and I will make sure my fellow gaming friends to know about it ;-)

That 25% that didn’t pay probably wouldn’t have paid any way. In my experience which is the music and film industry people are just going to be thieves! This is a great formula for some forms of entertainment but not for all. We could never do this in the movie industry because of the amount of people it takes to make a movie. Maybe a couple low budget indie film (around $7,000 budget which is extremely low) but even then they would be operating at a lost.

The human factor is what’s being undermined here. I think the public has a misconception that everyone in the entertainment field are rich and some people equate downloading to the idea of being free!

One more explanation to the piracy rate could be trying before buying, too, especially when combined with the paying mechanics.

Of course you could pay $0.01 and later pay more, but if you then don’t want to buy, the $0.01 costs probably more for the developers than they gain and the effort you have put into going through the paying process is lost.

I paid them that 1$ and gladly.

This article should be updated; they have now broken the $1m barrier.
They have made some of the games open source as thanks.

People WANT free software without DRM and will pay for it.

Those that pirated most likely did not have access to their 3 payment methods.

Happens to me all the time, even when I just buy a game in the store.

does anybody know if indie pack is going to be availible when the action expires?

i’d be more than willing to pay full price for it and giving the money to charity later this month when i finaly get MC and paypal.

Having said that, I believe these type downloads of the portion of the 25% of ‘no pay’ are a small fraction.

Access to the ability to perform the pay process and simple curiosity about the games {before purchase} are most likely the two largest reasons for the ‘no pay’ downloads. And in today’s climate, lack of funds is probably a significant reason too.

If you been unemployed for any length of time, money for games isn’t high on your list of priorities. Being able to download games like these for free at least lets you have something new to look at besides on-line job applications.

I applaud the developers. I’ll probably download the games via bittorrent more out of curiosity than any other reason. And if I think people will like them, I’ll recommend them.

I can tell you right now, that the vast majority of people who downloaded it figured .01 or so wouldn’t make a difference (especially since PayPal charges .33 for each transaction)

I had to sign up to a pay plan in order to make the purchase. The convenience of not going through the payment details is not to be overlooked. It took me several days to verify my new account and I almost missed the deadline.

I tried to buy another “Pay what you want” game, called _Crayon Physics Deluxe_. For some reason, the website would not accept my debit card, despite it being listed as acceptable. I was prepared to pay what I could afford, despite having less than a dollar in the bank. Since it wouldn’t accept my details, ultimately, I ended up torrenting the game.

To the developers of these games, these games would have never have been purchased for a higher price. Simply unaffordable.

Thanks to the developers for this generous offer. I’m sorry I don’t have more to give, because these games are certainly worthy.

I read another article recently, focusing on UK teens, that posited the idea that many kids who are growing up spending a good deal of time online aren’t even aware some some of the content they are grabbing online should be paid for. I also know some adults who unknowingly got pirated copies of stuff. Sometimes piracy is so blatant and out in the open, it’s hard to think of it as an illegal activity.

Not that this excuses it. Every article about piracy that I have read seems to ingore that one factor though, the people who will spend tons of time and even money ripping, organizing, hosting etc because they crave the attention and respect of being ‘the hook up’. Pirates do spend money, the computers, the drives, etc … One person I know who makes a point of not paying for content just spent a huge amount of extra money on a TV so that it would be ‘internet ready’, so she can play shows right from her computer on it.

But, what if people tried them, then DID decide to buy them? Their first $0 download would still be recorded, not appended to note that they paid later.

I personally downloaded for free, then went back to donate what I felt the games were worth. I never donate/pay for a game/program before trying it, that would just be stupid.

But here’s the thing: you really don’t know what you’re getting.

With all these games, you know you’re getting a good deal.

But with the RADIOHEAD album, i wish I could have listened, and then gone back to put money in the hat.

And to those of you who are “rebellious pirates” and downloaded it for free just because you can, I cannot strongly enough emphasize the “FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE” that you deserve.

* requires you pay with a payment processor, such as paypal or credit card, even if you only pay $0.01. This requires logging in and/or typing in a number.
* requires a valid, working email address to receive your download link.
* is a traditional server download instead of a torrent, limited to their bandwidth and costing the humble bundle money.

All of these things, roughly in order, are friction.

In contrast, pirating the humble bundle involves clicking a link. Which do you think is easier? Which do you think some non-trivial percentage of people will therefore prefer?

I’m so annoyed at all these “special place in hell for indie game pirates” comments, those people do not understand the internet and web interface design. Even the humble bundle encouraged people to at least use the torrent if they were going to pirate it so it didn’t cost them money, which means they should have realized they didn’t pull this off as well as they could have.

For the record, I bought the bundle, for more than you’d expect.

That’s definitely a good idea, too. Except you need to first make content producers trust the distribution infrastructure. It might be harder to make a torrent site accountable, or make it look trustable, than to make a visible organization with known venues. Unfortunately, it’s been ingrained in the minds of content producers that the only way to benefit from what they produce is to lock it and to hand over the key only after seeing the bank notes.

People might not like the IRS but they definitely trust the IRS on that it will try to extract the last dime of taxes out of everybody. Maybe content producers could be encouraged into the new scheme by investment in the trust they have in the draconic nature of government agencies.

Of course, governments and bureaucracies incur certain costs (corruption, misallocation, mishandling, incompetence) but those are mitigable in the end. And in the case of “media access tax,” unlike copyright, lobbying powers like media companies won’t lobby against public interest, as they are doing currently (damaging everything from equity to privacy of individuals in the name of “lost revenue”), since in that model tending to public interest will in turn tend to their business interests.

Bingo. I’m JUST under 18, so I seriously doubt I’m allowed to find my own place to live yet, let alone…this.

In holland we have a system called iDeal that lets u safely transfer money after u buy sth online… straight from ur bank account to that of the seller. That’s the only way i transfer money, so if i can’t use that, then forget it…

other than that, i often download a game to see whether it is worth buying… if i am done with it in 2 days (either complete the game or just stop liking it) then why would i spend my money…

But i’d sign up for a system like usenet… i don’t mind paying a steady amount every month if i am then left alone in my downloading… hell i’ll pay 20 – 30 bucks per month for it… but the content creators don’t want this ofcourse…

thanks http://www.wolfire.com also :-)

Pirate are paying more than governement people;

so STOP!!!!

same in India and China.

One is already done here in Germany (and other places I’d imagine), where you can pay for just about anything online through a normal bank transfer. You personally pick up a thing called a TAN list from your bank, which is a list of 100 number one-time codes that you use to do online banking. This makes it very secure, because even if someone gets your banking login they can’t do shit without that TAN list.

The other is payment through cell phones. Just send a text message to a number and $x are automatically drawn from your monthly statement.

Credit cards are pretty rare here in Europe, and not everyone wants to go through the hassle of setting up a PayPal account when almost everything can be paid with a bank transfer.

“Hey everyone! Lets jump on the bandwagon and dump our cash into this cuz of its merit, not its worth.”

Not to say I don’t contribute for things like this, I dropped $5 into World of Goo when they did this.

Great initiative though.

I feel kinda bad, I really wanted to donate, but my bank acc is compromised and nobody around is having paypal acc.
Oh well…

But there are significant logistical challenges… it’s too early for it. These “choose your own price” events are just the first tentative step, and they have to become commonplace before bigger implementations can happen.

Here’s one idea…

Let’s say that this “choose your own price” model is taken up by a private torrent tracker. Half of what you pay goes to the creators of torrents that you’re seeding, and half is spread out amongst ALL torrents on the tracker (or maybe all torrents in a specific category), proportional to # of downloads & file size. Maybe throw in some charities, too.

I wouldn’t assume that every unofficial download is a case of piracy. Some of us just want to use torrents for everything we download.