When buying a Humble Bundle, buyers can decide for themselves which part of the purchase price goes to whom. This system is expected to be abolished in May and replaced by a fixed distribution that leaves little choice.
The change does not affect the purchase price, which is still freely selectable, but only the distribution of the amount paid. Still, it's grave because Humble Bundle has made charitable support an integral part of the brand.
Two options limit donations
In future, the sliders on the bundle pages will be replaced by just two ready-made options, with which the amount of the donation can only be adjusted to a limited extent. It is either 5 or 15 percent of the purchase price. Humble itself withholds 5 to 10 percent as a fee, the rest of the amount of 85 or 80 percent now goes to the publisher of the games on offer. At the same time, the interface is being revised a little by arranging the individual bundle levels in tabs to make long scrolling superfluous.
Officially, Humble Bundle writes that these changes would align the way charities are supported across the Humble offering. In the shop, for example, there was never a choice. In this context, the company also cites Humble Monthly, which as a monthly subscription also dispenses with options and still supports charitable organizations. For buyers, however, such a differentiation is irrelevant, because the differentiation of different products with different purchase options appears to be possible across the board.
Standardization for publishers
For publishers, however, the statement tends to apply. For them, the Humble offer is standardized considerably, because income can be calculated with a fixed rate regardless of the format. The “platform fee” made up of humble and donations will in future be between 15 and 20 percent of sales – and thus roughly the same as other shops. Before this, this amount could have been considerably more compact, since, according to Internet comments, there is a tendency that the donation regulator has often been pushed far to the right.
After the change, bundles will therefore be potentially more attractive for publishers as they become a normal, calculable sales option – a normal bundle offer. This is also important for Humble, because there have not been any major highlights in the bundle area for a long time. This can be read as a decline in the interest of companies in providing attractive products. The actual intention of the bundles is difficult for the new system to live up to.
Update 05.05.2021 10:50 pm
The change has now been put on hold. In the meantime, Humble wants to “rethink the slider and the long-term importance of customization options on the bundle pages,” the company writes on its blog. Now only the new design of the bundle pages is introduced, but with sliders. The last word has not been spoken: In this direction, “different approaches” to controllers and the distribution are to be tested in the future.
The editors would like to thank ComputerBase reader “Zynicus” for pointing out this update!