My gut reaction any time a beloved company/product is bought by a “big” or “old” company, particularly in gaming or media or tech, is “oh no, they sold out” or “uh oh, that’s the beginning of the end.” This type of reaction seems to be the dominant “hot take” in online communities as well. I don’t think this is necessarily a reasonable reflex, but I confess I feel it here, even when the buyer (IGN) is a company I trusted and enjoyed for many years for video game reviews and news (in this case, from about 2002-2012).
I welcome interesting arguments for why my reaction is inappropriate, or for that matter, appropriate. It’s pretty easy to enumerate acquisitions that went well and others that went poorly, but I certainly wouldn’t claim to have sufficient data to make a reasoned prediction about how this will go.
The humble bundle concept sold out a long time ago. The first incarnation was "The Humble Indie Bundle" - which raised an unexpectedly large amount of money for independent game developers (in a time long before 'indie games' was a valid genre).
After seeing that this was a successful formula, they went on to raise funding in 2011 and pushed for larger publishers / developers to target with their acquired audience of heavily engaged gaming fans (mostly indie people). There was quite a strong note of sourness at the commercial interests being spun out of what was originally a charity + grassroots initiative.
Now, as many other people have mentioned in this thread, they've largely fallen into another same again steam sale outlet.
My attitude is more of indifference - they sold out long before being acquired by some big old company. I feel they put too much emphasis on aggressively acquiring new sales at the expense of their old customers.
Years ago in the Economist I read about a study that has stuck with me since. According to a study of public company mergers, "Only a disappointing 17% of mergers had added value to the combined company, 30% produced no discernible difference and as many as 53% actually destroyed shareholder value." [1]
That certainly matches my impression. My subjective opinion through friends is that acquiring companies rarely fully understand what they've bought, and pretty regularly kill what makes the acquired company special. Not on purpose, really. I imagine an enthusiastic cartoon monster running around trying to hug people it takes a fancy to. Some it squishes to jelly, some merely end up bruised, and some it neglects or drops when its whims turn elsewhere.
Companies often acquire other companies for the purpose of running them into the ground. They take a few of the best workers and assets,kick everyone else out, move the office, and it's almost as if the company never existed in the first place. It's the purchasing company that sets the rules, and they typically want their acquisition to assimilate into the borg collective. There would probably be a very different outcome is Humble Bundle bought IGN.
The gaming industry is replete with examples of original creative studios with blockbuster IPs being bought up by the likes of EA and Ubisoft and being shutdown a year later. Or worse they buy a studio and milk its franchise dry without taking any of the same risks and innovations that made the original franchise a success in the first place. In many cases the original staff of the studio are laid off or are merged in to the larger sweatshops which the gaming industry is notorious for. In fact here's a list of studios axed by EA.
https://kotaku.com/an-updated-list-of-studios-ea-has-bought-...
So if you were wondering why you dont see a new Command and Conqueror or Wing commander game, now you know why.
I share the same reaction. I can think of many examples in which a company that made something I cared about got acquired and the product got ruined. Pretty much the only counter example I can come up with right now are Disney's acquisitions of Marvel and Star Wars.
I generally disagree with the gaming community Zeitgeist, but this reaction seems fair.
Gaming is a cynical industry full of talented idealusts, much like music and film... But even worse because they innovate a lot harder and faster on business models, to the detriment of the consumer.
Consumers are right to be concerned, it's born out many times how idealistic creative small companies get absorbed into huge cynical businesses that are focused on extracting the maximum value from the asset, and the customers lose out.
Didn't Humble Bundle essentially sell out long ago? They just sell indie games in bulk, and generally the stuff on offer these days is nothing special.
Many old media companies have a bad reputation attached to them. Support for corrupt schemes like DRM and copyright driven censorship, undemocratic policy making and etc. So such reaction is understandable. I can't say anything about IGN though, I'm not familiar with them at all.
I have purchased a fair amount from Humble bundle, and have been a subscriber to the humble monthly bundle since it's inception. Suffice it to say, I have a great appreciation and admiration for the way Humble Bundle works (worked?).
Meanwhile, IGN has been around a lot longer, and has earned a terrible reputation for selling reviews and generally being shameless. I lost all respect for IGN long ago, and I absolutely refuse to contribute to it in any way, so I've cancelled my humble bundle monthly subscription.
Is there a name for the feeling you feel when you're watching a movie and the bad guy wins? That's what I feel now.
> has earned a terrible reputation for selling reviews
IGN editorial is separated from the rest of the company like just about every other media outlet and those extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. One or two anonymous allegations does not a "reputation" make. When someone puts their name to it and brings evidence to back it up, we'll talk. As-is, this is just a meme among the angrier gamer community.
(n.b.: I don't read IGN or care about the company, but I do care about mendacity a little bit.)
That's a curious way to phrase "Congratulations on making a company which has sold several hundred million dollars of software."
I don't get why HN, of all the places in the world, would seek to tear down software companies, literally started on HN, which produce a service that people love and which achieve a successful outcome for all concerned.
I also don't think we should teach people that a middlebrow dismissal passes for financial analysis, so some toy math using their public data: they report ~$106 million in charity. Their users probably don't alter their split materially, so if one models their bundles as their main revenue source (which, knowing nothing about the internals of the business, I would), that implies $106M / .15 = $700M in gross sales. Their cut of that is 20%, or ~$140M over the lifetime of the company. I model them as being a rather briskly growing business, so I'd estimate last year's revenues in the ~$30 million range. I'd also estimate probably ~60% margins.
You want the lower on a $47 million acquisition price on a quickly growing software company with $30 million a year in revenue? Yeah, I'll take the upper. Not a hard call. This was clearly a very successful outcome for all concerned.
[Edit to add: Above paragraph is incorrect because I misread the parent as raising at a valuation of $4.7M. If they raised $4.7 million the valuation was probably ~$20M. Do I still think 10x is plausible on that? Plausible, not nearly a given.]
Disclaimers: no non-public information used above, no commercial relationship, although I did pitch them on a consulting gig once. I have paid them a few hundred dollars over the years for video games.
To be honest, I haven't cared for Humble Bundle for a very long time. The first few were amazing: all cross platform, great stuff. Since then they've branched out... Into becoming a glorified Steam sale. It may be a viable business model, but I don't find it terribly enticing.
They've not been humble, indie, or a bundle for a long time.
Par for the course. Similar disingenuous commercialization is rampant through the games industry: see what Valve has done to Steam, and what major publishers have done to their titles vis monetization.
Unfortunately the games industry is floating in too much money for another crash to clean house.
> The first few were amazing: all cross platform, great stuff. Since then they've branched out... Into becoming a glorified Steam sale.
100% agree with this. I got in a bit late, but the first bundles were still pretty fantastic. I loved the fact that they had Linux games. But eventually quality started slipping.
For example, their claims that a game runs on Linux are very unreliable.
Some games just work out of the box with no sweat at all. Some of them work after some tweaking (installing packages, etc). But I have at least 8 games that either don't work on Linux at all (fail to start due to errors or segfaults) or have some serious issues (random crashes, game breaking bugs). Windows versions of those games worked on wine, so I just swallowed the loss, but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth.
But this is just sloppy quality control. Most of the problems I have mentioned would be detected immediately by simply running the game on the recommended configurations.
All that said, I have since moved on to GOG and so far I have been pretty happy with their claims of Linux support. Had one hiccup ("X3: Terran War Pack"... that was a wasted weekend), but everything else (~30 games) just works. Their quality control seems to be a bit better, and their community forums are helpful (so far), so I'm happy. Pity that they don't have more Linux games I like.
I think they've done rather well for themselves, given their success. They still support charities in a major way, and haven't given into DLCs the way Steam has. Overall, GOG > Humble Bundle > Steam if I must have a game not on GOG, so in that sense, glorified Steam sale, yes.
After the original bundle, I've gotten a few in the last year: Intergalactic, Freedom, Star Wars, and Civilization. All have been great values, if you know what you want. Even if you don't, you're giving to charity and you can gift the games to someone.
> As well as no longer caring if games are cross platform.
As a Linux gamer, the fact that some of the non-Humble Indie Bundles contain games I can't run is annoying (I am fine with these being offered, just don't mail me about them unless I can run them), but the Humble Indie Bundles tend to contain exclusively or nearly exclusively cross-platform games, like they always have.
At the very least, GOG is an independent game retailer. For most of the games you'll see on the Humble Store, what you actually get is just a Steam key for that game. There's a few indie games where they've funded porting work for one of the Humble Indie Bundles, but I doubt many of those are exclusive to the Humble Store.
That HN submission was softkilled almost immediately (it fell of the front page near immediately, presumably by flags by people who aren't interested in random gamer stuff). And now the story is #1 on Hacker News.
This is a case where HN's rule of original titles can be somewhat annoying.
Whats the actual strategic thinking behind this? IGN expanding into retail? Why? They're effectively media company. I dont see any sense in this acquisition. And that worries me. Do they understand what made HB so successful, are they going to give it managerial autonomy, what are their plans?
Damn, I hope they won't close the section that lets you buy (most) Steam games all year round. Unlike regular Steam, it doesn't have the frustrating "geolocation-locked" limitation the Steam store has in Germany (which is very frustrating when you're not German, just an expat).
At least Apple's AppStore lets you buy from your own country's store instead of assuming the country from geolocation.
I bought several indie game bundles when they were for Linux and/or DRM free. Sadly I had trouble getting most of the Linux games running, at least on Debian (thanks multiarch). I have also bought a few titles off their web store, all you get there is a Steam key. However, I have bought games from the store specificaly hoping that Valve gets less of the cut (PUBG being the latest).
However, I just bought two book bundles over the past month. They are still fantastic. 10-15 books DRM free for about dollar or so each, and a portion of that money I specified to be donated to FSF.
Hopefully post IGN aquisition the book bundles will continue.
PS. I bought Cuphead week of release on GOG to show my support. It may be Windows only but it was DRM free at launch.
Valve get nothing when you purchase a steam key from another sales platform. They allow the free use of their drm and content delivery platform to acquire new customers, and keep existing customers locked in.
I wonder how much of this is IGN wanting to get into a SaaS business and see this as a way to acquire there way there, and take on Steam?
That could add a nice revenue stream and help let them diversify from the advertising model which is increasingly facing downward pressure on RPMs from companies like FB and Google.
Interestingly enough, if built up sufficiently, it lets them better align their interests with their users. Instead of making the experience slower and more cluttered with additional display ads, they can focus on creating an awesome UX (if you become a subscriber of course).
As a gamer, I have my doubts about this happening given IGNs history, but one can always be hopeful.
Though HB says: "We will stay the same", I'm sure practically everyone knows that that won't be the case. IGN, the go-to place to get sponsored reviews of AAA games.
I'm a monthly bundle subscriber since inception. I don't check the monthly bundles regularly (more like two-three-four times a year), but always find games that I enjoy and wouldn't have discovered otherwise. For $150/year, that's a pretty good value for a very casual gamer like me, i.e. someone who doesn't follow the gaming industry and just spontaneously decides to play something from time to time.
Actually, over the pas month I was hoping Humble would return to the old days, not in terms of qantity but in therms of quality. The first bundles had some great titles like Braid and World of Goo, but later on there were some gems (like Stardew Valley), but in general there were a lot more mediocre games.
Sadly, I doubt that IGN has increasing the quality as the prime target in mind.
I can't wait for IGN to put their name all over stuff like they own it, like they did with almost everybody's cheat codes submitted to the old cheat codes site that they bought, including codes I had submitted. Any they've never bothered to fix them even after notification, either.
Just wait and see. The garbage self-marketing begins now.
[+] [-] baddox|8 years ago|reply
I welcome interesting arguments for why my reaction is inappropriate, or for that matter, appropriate. It’s pretty easy to enumerate acquisitions that went well and others that went poorly, but I certainly wouldn’t claim to have sufficient data to make a reasoned prediction about how this will go.
[+] [-] rkachowski|8 years ago|reply
After seeing that this was a successful formula, they went on to raise funding in 2011 and pushed for larger publishers / developers to target with their acquired audience of heavily engaged gaming fans (mostly indie people). There was quite a strong note of sourness at the commercial interests being spun out of what was originally a charity + grassroots initiative.
Now, as many other people have mentioned in this thread, they've largely fallen into another same again steam sale outlet.
My attitude is more of indifference - they sold out long before being acquired by some big old company. I feel they put too much emphasis on aggressively acquiring new sales at the expense of their old customers.
[+] [-] wpietri|8 years ago|reply
That certainly matches my impression. My subjective opinion through friends is that acquiring companies rarely fully understand what they've bought, and pretty regularly kill what makes the acquired company special. Not on purpose, really. I imagine an enthusiastic cartoon monster running around trying to hug people it takes a fancy to. Some it squishes to jelly, some merely end up bruised, and some it neglects or drops when its whims turn elsewhere.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/1999/nov/29/10
[+] [-] c3534l|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _nedR|8 years ago|reply
So if you were wondering why you dont see a new Command and Conqueror or Wing commander game, now you know why.
[+] [-] ajmurmann|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pxtl|8 years ago|reply
Gaming is a cynical industry full of talented idealusts, much like music and film... But even worse because they innovate a lot harder and faster on business models, to the detriment of the consumer.
Consumers are right to be concerned, it's born out many times how idealistic creative small companies get absorbed into huge cynical businesses that are focused on extracting the maximum value from the asset, and the customers lose out.
[+] [-] TylerE|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colechristensen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x5486|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fierarul|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] schlipity|8 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, IGN has been around a lot longer, and has earned a terrible reputation for selling reviews and generally being shameless. I lost all respect for IGN long ago, and I absolutely refuse to contribute to it in any way, so I've cancelled my humble bundle monthly subscription.
Is there a name for the feeling you feel when you're watching a movie and the bad guy wins? That's what I feel now.
[+] [-] eropple|8 years ago|reply
IGN editorial is separated from the rest of the company like just about every other media outlet and those extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. One or two anonymous allegations does not a "reputation" make. When someone puts their name to it and brings evidence to back it up, we'll talk. As-is, this is just a meme among the angrier gamer community.
(n.b.: I don't read IGN or care about the company, but I do care about mendacity a little bit.)
[+] [-] sdwisely|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|8 years ago|reply
I am assuming this is not a 10x exit.
[+] [-] patio11|8 years ago|reply
I don't get why HN, of all the places in the world, would seek to tear down software companies, literally started on HN, which produce a service that people love and which achieve a successful outcome for all concerned.
I also don't think we should teach people that a middlebrow dismissal passes for financial analysis, so some toy math using their public data: they report ~$106 million in charity. Their users probably don't alter their split materially, so if one models their bundles as their main revenue source (which, knowing nothing about the internals of the business, I would), that implies $106M / .15 = $700M in gross sales. Their cut of that is 20%, or ~$140M over the lifetime of the company. I model them as being a rather briskly growing business, so I'd estimate last year's revenues in the ~$30 million range. I'd also estimate probably ~60% margins.
You want the lower on a $47 million acquisition price on a quickly growing software company with $30 million a year in revenue? Yeah, I'll take the upper. Not a hard call. This was clearly a very successful outcome for all concerned.
[Edit to add: Above paragraph is incorrect because I misread the parent as raising at a valuation of $4.7M. If they raised $4.7 million the valuation was probably ~$20M. Do I still think 10x is plausible on that? Plausible, not nearly a given.]
Disclaimers: no non-public information used above, no commercial relationship, although I did pitch them on a consulting gig once. I have paid them a few hundred dollars over the years for video games.
[+] [-] kornish|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taway_1212|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jchw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SCdF|8 years ago|reply
Recently I saw a humble book bundle that included a book about the healing power of crystals.
At that moment it became clear (crystal clear even!) to me that it is no longer what it used to be, and I finally unsubscribed.
[+] [-] devbug|8 years ago|reply
They've not been humble, indie, or a bundle for a long time.
Par for the course. Similar disingenuous commercialization is rampant through the games industry: see what Valve has done to Steam, and what major publishers have done to their titles vis monetization.
Unfortunately the games industry is floating in too much money for another crash to clean house.
[+] [-] disconnected|8 years ago|reply
100% agree with this. I got in a bit late, but the first bundles were still pretty fantastic. I loved the fact that they had Linux games. But eventually quality started slipping.
For example, their claims that a game runs on Linux are very unreliable.
Some games just work out of the box with no sweat at all. Some of them work after some tweaking (installing packages, etc). But I have at least 8 games that either don't work on Linux at all (fail to start due to errors or segfaults) or have some serious issues (random crashes, game breaking bugs). Windows versions of those games worked on wine, so I just swallowed the loss, but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth.
But this is just sloppy quality control. Most of the problems I have mentioned would be detected immediately by simply running the game on the recommended configurations.
All that said, I have since moved on to GOG and so far I have been pretty happy with their claims of Linux support. Had one hiccup ("X3: Terran War Pack"... that was a wasted weekend), but everything else (~30 games) just works. Their quality control seems to be a bit better, and their community forums are helpful (so far), so I'm happy. Pity that they don't have more Linux games I like.
[+] [-] djhworld|8 years ago|reply
But yeah in terms of games the last bundle I bought was probably more than 2 years ago
[+] [-] ece|8 years ago|reply
After the original bundle, I've gotten a few in the last year: Intergalactic, Freedom, Star Wars, and Civilization. All have been great values, if you know what you want. Even if you don't, you're giving to charity and you can gift the games to someone.
[+] [-] Avshalom|8 years ago|reply
As well as no longer caring if games are cross platform.
I mean I still shop there because it's as good a retailer as any but they are no longer significantantly different than GOG or Steam.
[+] [-] ehsankia|8 years ago|reply
I'm curious, does it say somewhere what the total amount they have contributed to charity over all the years?
EDIT: Found it on wikipedia:
> By September 2017, the total charitable amount raised by the Bundles exceeded $100 million across 50 different charities.
That is pretty impressive.
[+] [-] Freak_NL|8 years ago|reply
As a Linux gamer, the fact that some of the non-Humble Indie Bundles contain games I can't run is annoying (I am fine with these being offered, just don't mail me about them unless I can run them), but the Humble Indie Bundles tend to contain exclusively or nearly exclusively cross-platform games, like they always have.
[+] [-] thristian|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k_sh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Deimorz|8 years ago|reply
It was posted earlier today but didn't get much attention (possibly because the title didn't make it clear it was an acquisition): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15468583
[+] [-] minimaxir|8 years ago|reply
This is a case where HN's rule of original titles can be somewhat annoying.
[+] [-] drumhead|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schwede|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wildpeaks|8 years ago|reply
At least Apple's AppStore lets you buy from your own country's store instead of assuming the country from geolocation.
[+] [-] ryanpcmcquen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coworkerblues|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] penguinUzer|8 years ago|reply
However, I just bought two book bundles over the past month. They are still fantastic. 10-15 books DRM free for about dollar or so each, and a portion of that money I specified to be donated to FSF.
Hopefully post IGN aquisition the book bundles will continue.
PS. I bought Cuphead week of release on GOG to show my support. It may be Windows only but it was DRM free at launch.
[+] [-] elrobinto|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shostack|8 years ago|reply
That could add a nice revenue stream and help let them diversify from the advertising model which is increasingly facing downward pressure on RPMs from companies like FB and Google.
Interestingly enough, if built up sufficiently, it lets them better align their interests with their users. Instead of making the experience slower and more cluttered with additional display ads, they can focus on creating an awesome UX (if you become a subscriber of course).
As a gamer, I have my doubts about this happening given IGNs history, but one can always be hopeful.
[+] [-] wallabie|8 years ago|reply
Though HB says: "We will stay the same", I'm sure practically everyone knows that that won't be the case. IGN, the go-to place to get sponsored reviews of AAA games.
[+] [-] gedrap|8 years ago|reply
Best of luck to them.
[+] [-] JepZ|8 years ago|reply
Sadly, I doubt that IGN has increasing the quality as the prime target in mind.
[+] [-] damian2000|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lightedman|8 years ago|reply
Just wait and see. The garbage self-marketing begins now.
[+] [-] shoefly|8 years ago|reply