Indie Conspirators

The Humble Bundle, a bundle of games that basically lets you pay whatever you want to support charity, is an evil conspiracy. There, I finally said it. Whenever a new Humble Bundle comes out, I watch the video and I am predictably like “Hell yeah! I love the Humble Bundle! I can’t wait to buy it!” And then I scroll down to those graphs to see what other people are paying, and I see the average price is always around five dollars or something. The Linux guys always pay more than the Mac folks who always pay more than the Windows people. That’s fine. But then I go to pay for it and, when I look at the sliding scales, the guilt trip starts.

“I’m paying them twenty-five dollars? Okay, how does that breakdown? The developers? Yeah, better give those guys some money.” Then the scale illustrating the ratio of money to developers:charity tips away from the children and I’m like “Oh, wait, no, you poor children, I’m sorry I’ll give you more money, I promise!” But then the developer’s “Humble Tip” goes down and I’m like, “No, dammit, no, I’m sorry, Humble guys! Please don’t judge me! The EFF? I don’t even know who they are and I feel bad for not giving them more money!”

I never feel like they’re actually happy with me. Like someone somewhere is going to look at my purchase and be like “Look at this! This Sebastian Force only gave us $5.50! He must hate children! Let’s go to his house and beat him with a flaming Dreamcast controller for being a horrible person.”

This never stops, either! I’m never happy with what I give to everyone, but I especially feel bad for whoever gets the least amount of money. I’m basically telling them, “Sorry, but you’re not important enough to give more than two dollars to. I spend more money on a Three Musketeers bar and a ginger ale than I gave your entire company for the purchase of six games. And that’s if you’re giving twenty-five dollars! Try giving the average of $4.51 and see what those poor kids think of you. They’re probably cursing your name in their sleep right now, and undoubtedly at least some are making voodoo dolls to make you run outside naked, screaming, with a shovel in one hand and banging your head into a Kinect with the other. This is what I think about when I donate to the Humble Bundle.

My conclusion is, the Humble Bundles are evil conspiracies designed to make you give up your entire paycheck just so that you feel content with yourself. And I will, Humble Bundle, because you deserve it more than anyone else.