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Indie Game Publisher Humble Games Reportedly Lays Off All Staff (gamespot.com) 31

Posted by BeauHD from the company-restructuring dept.
Humble Games, the indie game publisher behind the popular pay-what-you-want "Humble Game Bundle," has laid off its entire staff of 36 people. However, the company says it is not shutting down and Humble Bundle will not be impacted. Instead, the job cuts are part of a restructuring of operations. GameSpot reports: In a statement shared with GameSpot, Humble Games confirmed that Humble Bundle will have "no impact on its operations. Additionally, ongoing and upcoming games from Humble Games will still move ahead and be published by the company. Humble Games is the publisher of many notable indie games, including Stray Gods, Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus, Chinatown Detective Agency, Ikenfell, Unpacking, Slay the Spire, and Midnight Fight Express, just to name a few.

Humble Games is the separate publishing arm of digital storefront Humble Bundle. Both companies are owned by IGN Entertainment, but operate as a separate entities. Earlier this year, IGN Entertainment also bought video game websites Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247, GamesIndustry.biz, and Dicebreaker from Gamer Network.
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Indie Game Publisher Humble Games Reportedly Lays Off All Staff More

Indie Game Publisher Humble Games Reportedly Lays Off All Staff

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  • It's already gone downhill, since before this, at least from a buyer's perspective. I bought a lot of games for nothin' and played a lot of stuff I never would have played otherwise. I would have paid $0 for it. The makers didn't have to pay for distribution anyway, but they did get to say they "shipped" a ton of copies.

    As a site it's not a difficult concept, and it's possibly well-documented how to run it, so it's totally possible that there really won't be any disruption. Has it already been moved over to

    • I stopped buying when they started requiring an (Score:5, Informative)

      by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2024 @08:06PM (#64650676) Journal

      account - for many years prior to that they would just email you. I argued with them, they lied about it being for security.

      They completely lost their way years ago and forgot what they were for (you know, originally charities). That they've been bought by some shitbag media conglomerate does not surprise me at all.

      • How likely is it that this layoff has anything to do with recent advances in generative AI?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Well, they're a video game publisher, and right now there are zero video games developed by generative AI, nor will there be any for the foreseeable future. So what do you think?

          • right now there are zero video games developed by generative AI

            I asked ChatGPT to write me a HTML/Javascript Tic Tac Toe game and it spat it out in about 10 seconds. Worked perfectly. Does that count?

            • I asked ChatGPT to write me a HTML/Javascript Tic Tac Toe game and it spat it out in about 10 seconds. Worked perfectly. Does that count?

              No [github.com]

            • On a rainy fall afternoon in 1969 I got to visit the Ontario Science Center on it's opening day and play tic-tac-toe against a Vax.
                Yesterday I virtually drove Mazda MX5 in a race against the full 1965 F1 grid on a recreation of the Spa-Francochamps circuit as it existed in 1966.
              Just my long winded Boomer way of saying games have moved on a bit since tic-tac-toe.

          • Oh, really? [tomshardware.com]

            • That is a list of games using AI generated content. OP was talking about games developed by AI.

    • Someone in the entertainment space will buy these games as assets and carry them forward.

      Either that or the owner is looking at what an offshore team costs versus the projected revenue amortized for the next 5 years.
       

    • This is the publisher, not the store.

  • Sad. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23, 2024 @07:53PM (#64650654)
    I stopped buying Humble Bundles when they stopped shipping Linux and macOS versions of games and became Windows-only. That, my friends, was a long time ago indeed.

    • Most games sold on HumbleBundle provide keys to unlock the game on Steam.
      Most games on Steam run on Linux nowadays.

      • That is quite missing the point. Support under Steam/Proton is not the same as native Linux.

        • Shouldn't your complaint be with the game devs themselves? Steam will give you the Mac and Linux versions along with the Windows version of a game if they exist.

          But prior to the Steam Deck taking off and pushing Linux gaming into the non-hardcore audience, reports I saw were Linux support issues were 40-50% of tickets and < 1% of users.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      I stopped buying when the bundles started creeping up in price. They used to be easily under $10, then they crept up over $10, and now $20 and $30 bundles are common.

      I did have Choice for a while when they did a last call for "classic Choice" where if you signed up you got a deal no one else would get. When they cancelled that, I cancelled as the price went up and the games stopped being interesting to me. I've only been getting it as I needed it as there weren't many benefits to stay subscribed.

      Most of the

  • Humble Bundle begat Humble Store. Later, Humble Bundle begat Humble Games.

    As TFA says:

    Humble Games is the separate publishing arm of digital storefront Humble Bundle. Both companies are owned by IGN Entertainment, but operate as a separate entities.

    We are 'only' losing Humble Games, an excellent indie publisher.

    Damn.

  • GOG is better than Humble (Score:3)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Wednesday July 24, 2024 @01:28AM (#64651030)

    I bought the first or second humble bundle. Which must have been almost 20 years ago. It had a bunch of neat software for the Mac with it. I used most of that.

    For games on my Linux PC gog.com is my go-to provider. Neat bundles, good service, reasonable pricing. Humble just has too many hoops these days and smells like DRM in too many places.

  • Humble games were producers/distributors (and maybe also developers?) of games, and are a different group from Humble Bundle.

    One of my favorite games of past years (SIGNALIS) was in fact distributed by Humble Games.

  • To be fair, isn't 36 people a lot for what they do?

    • Most publishers have more staff than that. This is *not* the Storefront or Humble Bundle being discussed. It's the publisher Humble Games

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • so of course all the comments are about humble bundle.

    Although: I do wonder if the financial health of one relates at all the health of the other.

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