Humble Indie Bundle moving towards $1 million, still being pirated
The Humble Indie Bundle that we posted about the other day is doing quite well -- they've raised almost US$800,000 by selling five indie games (playable on Mac, Linux, and Windows) for pay-what-you-will. In fact, they've done so well that they've added another game into the mix -- you'll also get Samorost 2 if you pick up the bundle. And a little birdie pointed out to us that if you pause their trailer video at about 1:16, they'll be adding another bonus to the mix if they reach a full million dollars raised. [Spoiler: They say they'll actually release the source code of Gish, Lugaru, and Penumbra Overture.]
Is there any bad news about this giveaway? Well yes: people are still pirating it. The developers claim that 25% of the bundle downloads are "pirated" -- people who didn't pay anything at all for it. They didn't secure the link, authenticate the downloads, or protect the game with DRM (and they didn't ask users to pay any more than one cent for it), and people are still just rolling up and downloading the games for free.
Unfortunately, that doesn't solve any arguments -- those for DRM would say that real security would prevent that, and those against DRM would claim that it won't. At any rate, those are five great indie games that are worth your money -- if you downloaded them for free, put a few bucks in the pot.
