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THQ Humble Bundle ends at $5,097,373 (THQ President contributes $10K)
- joshschreuder 14y agoThis is over 50% of their market cap of $9.6M, and looks like it caused at least a little bump in their share prices: http://tinyurl.com/bwzblvy http://tinyurl.com/bwzblvy
- arthulia 14y agoNot all of it goes to them, though. I allocated all of my purchase to charity.
- EtienneK 14y agoI donated 90% to THQ. The way things are going over there, they need all the charity they can get. Especially if we still want to see Saints Row 4...
- ekianjo 14y agoI would dissociate "publisher" and "assets". Even if THQ dies their assets will be passed on to someone else. You rarely see IP completely disappear, just like you do not always see factories being demolished when a company bankrupts. Honestly this is probably better at this stage to see THQ go bankrupt since they have been poor at managing their assets, and let someone else take control and hopefully make more money out of their assets.
- zokier 14y ago> I would dissociate "publisher" and "assets". Even if THQ dies their assets will be passed on to someone else. You rarely see IP completely disappear Maybe not disappear, but end up in a legal limbo (eg split up to multiple parties), or in a vault of some insurance/investment company which has no interest or clue to do anything with it. While I can't now recall any specific examples, iirc there has been cases like that before. idk how the Interplay breakup eventually landed, at least some IP managed to get out.
- IheartApplesDix 14y agoA little bump being +25% I had no idea that THQ was in such dire straits. Looking at their Humble portfolio, they have a diverse set of technologies here. It's a real shame that they aren't able to monetize them better. When you look at other publishers, they tend to stick with a single technology, but THQ never had that huge AAA hit that they could keep iterating on cheaply to print money. CTG Engine, 4A Engine, Essence Engine, GeoMod Engine. There's a lot of technology here. (2 internal) 4A is probably their most advanced. If I were them, I'd focus on making a CoD clone with the 4A Engine. Perhaps the graphical superiority could appeal to a more hardcore audience that would fill out as GPU technology catches up.
- TruthElixirX 14y agoThey tried a CoD clone in Homefront, and it did not do very well.
- joshschreuder 14y agoNot having played it, I thought that most of the criticism went to the game's short length rather than the engine.
- jgoney 14y agoI would agree with this. I felt that the game was well done, engaging, and fun....but unfortunately it just stops right when the story starts to really heat up. The ending definitely had an unfinished feel for me.
- rtkwe 14y agoThat might be part of their problem. Instead of making a big AAA game they keep reinventing the engine. It seems most really successful game studios have 1-2 engines that they're very good at producing good games on. They may update often but it's rarely an entirely new engine. (See Valve, ID, etc.) Making a new engine for every game can't help their delivery times.
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- rtkwe 14y agoDon't forget that not all of that goes to THQ. There's the default split but I can't find what that was for this bundle. It's 70% to the devs for the Amnesia Fortnight. (Might be higher than normal though)
- bentrengrove 14y agoI wonder if he gave 100% to THQ.
- franciscoap 14y ago95% charity (THQ included?), 5% Humble tip. http://twitter.com/Jason_Rubin/status/279014483085631488 http://twitter.com/Jason_Rubin/status/279014483085631488
- rtkwe 14y agoCharity is Childs Play and Red Cross. What president would lump his company in as charity?
- PhantomLobe 14y agoA very accounting-creative president.
- franciscoap 14y agoIt was a joke re: THQ's precarious situation.
- andrewfelix 14y agoI know that this wasn't meant to save THQ, but considering the flagship titles that were made available, that amount of money is not very impressive. It is a drop in the ocean relative to the development costs of those games. Most of those titles would have made more in their first day on store shelves. EDIT: Also worth mentioning that the THQ president might have donated 10k in order to push up the average price.
- joshschreuder 14y agoConsidering the games are between 1 and 8 years old, I think the amount raised is decent enough. Also, it would appear as though the THQ president was attempting to get people to match / beat his top donation: https://twitter.com/Jason_Rubin/status/278920299909636096 https://twitter.com/Jason_Rubin/status/278920299909636096
- sliverstorm 14y agoAgreed. While the games might have made more when they were 1 day old, they are not one day old. The whole thing has also garnered some positive press and upwelling of positive feelings towards the studio.
- ekianjo 14y agoA brief calculation assuming: - first 100 000 purchases without THQ president intervention between 3 and 5 dollars - 10k intervention at 100 000 point - subsequent purchases made above average pricing seem to indicate the 10k THQ "push" made the average price jump 10 cents at least (conservative estimation), providing a resulting boost in profit of 70 000 dollars (again, conservative estimation, probably). http://www.codeskulptor.org/#user7-h9oPfIQh4l-0.py http://www.codeskulptor.org/#user7-h9oPfIQh4l-0.py Somehow I do not think the Humble Bundle should allow the creators/publishers to modify the average price since it's more or less like insider trading in the stock echange: once you modify the average price you reap the profits - it's highly unethical and here it clearly shows the 10k expense from THQ president made a 60k profit for THQ.
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- asb 14y agoI'm personally counting that fact that HIB V manage to pull in more money ($5,108,725 http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/281031-prior-bundle-statistics http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/281...) as a win for those of us upset that this offer moved away from Humble Bundle's DRM-free roots.
- fafner 14y agoBut HIB VI managed to pull in only $US 2m and HIB V had Psychonauts. So I think this is actually not a win. It clearly shows that big titles draw the money whether they have DRM and Windows-only doesn't even matter. (to add to it: Psychonatus was DRM-free but the Linux port was totally broken when released.) And to game companies it's certainly interesting as well. It shows a great way to make some additional money off some older titles and get some PR. I wouldn't be surprised if we see similar offerings in the next year. (I hope that if it happens: id does a true HIB and uses this as an opportunity to release Rage for Linux.)
- mattmanser 14y agoPsychonauts was in HB V (and was unfortunately dreadful, awful controls, bad camera, terrible graphics, potential to have been great). Bastion was the real gem in that bundle, such an amazing game. That bundle was a lot better than 6 and packed with great games, with Sword & sorcery, Super Meat Boy, Limbo and Lone Survivor. That bundle was brilliant. HB6 was disappointing, too many platformers, Torchlight was repetitive, SPAZ was the only game I really loved in that pack. It even had two brick breaking games in it, a genre dead (and deservedly so) since the 90s.
- fafner 14y agoSorry that was I typo I meant HIB V. Yeah, HIB VI was a disappointment and Vessel was only finally released for Linux two days ago.
- tekmate 14y agoyou're probably alone with that opinion psychonauts is one of the best games of all time, being released in 2005 on xbox it looked amazing, the artdirection is still great on the pc port today and with controller it plays amazing. while bastion is good it's nowhere near the quality in writing, creativity and gameplay