Humble subscription service is dumping Mac, Linux access in 18 days
source link: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/01/humble-subscription-service-is-dumping-mac-linux-access-in-18-days/
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"not all five percents are created equal" —
Humble subscription service is dumping Mac, Linux access in 18 days
Coincides with service's February 1 shift to a Windows-only launcher.
Sam Machkovech - 1/14/2022, 11:00 AM
Humble, the bundle-centric games retailer that launched with expansive Mac and Linux support in 2010, will soon shift a major component of its business to Windows-only gaming.
The retailer's monthly subscription service, Humble Choice, previously offered a number of price tiers; the more you paid, the more new games you could claim in a given month. Starting February 1, Humble Choice will include less choice, as it will only offer a single $12/month tier, complete with a few new game giveaways per month and ongoing access to two collections of games: Humble's existing "Trove" collection of classic games, and a brand-new "Humble Games Collection" of more modern titles.
Launcher cut-off: February 1, 2022
But this shift in subscription strategy comes with a new, unfortunate requirement: an entirely new launcher app, which must be used to access and download Humble Trove and Humble Games Collection games going forward. Worse, this app will be Windows-only. Current subscribers have been given an abrupt countdown warning (as spotted by NeoWin). Those subscribers have until January 31 to use the existing website interface to download DRM-free copies of any games' Mac or Linux versions. Starting February 1, subscription-specific downloads will be taken off the site, and Mac and Linux versions in particular will disappear altogether.
Interestingly, the current Trove library consists of 79 games, but Humble says that the Trove collection will include "50+ games" starting February 1. This week's warning to Humble's Mac and Linux subscribers notes that "many" of the current Trove games will appear on the Humble Launcher, which is likely a nice way of saying that some of the existing games will not—perhaps around 20 or so, based on the aforementioned numbers.
Despite these changes, Trove's selection of games will remain DRM-free. FAQs about the Humble Launcher suggest that subscribers can download Trove files and continue accessing them in DRM-free fashion, no Humble Launcher or ongoing subscription required. The same promise has not been made for the more modern game collection found in the new Humble Games Collection.
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Humble has not announced further changes to its existing business model, which largely revolves around Steam keys that Humble either includes in Humble Choice, sells a la carte, or bundles in pay-what-you-want collections. In the latter case, the more you pay for a given bundle, the more games are included, so long as your payment amount exceeds a certain threshold. A spot check of existing Humble accounts held by Ars Technica staffers still includes web download options for older bundles' DRM-free downloads, including Mac and Linux versions. These options, however, have become scarcer in recent years' bundles, with the significant exception of nongame sales like PDF downloads of books and comics.
But the shift toward a dedicated launcher, and its loud positioning as the sole way to access certain subscription options, suggests that Humble is at least positioning itself to take more PC games out of the existing Steam-linked ecosystem, if not planning to do so outright. [Update, 2:55 p.m. ET: A recent FAQ indicates that Humble Choice's biggest existing perk will persist to some extent: "a selection of hand-picked games redeemable via a key for select platforms, when available (Steam, Epic, Origin, GOG, etc.)." That language gives Humble wiggle room to make future Humble Choice games exclusive to the Humble Launcher, instead of arriving as redemption codes to be used at other popular storefronts. As of press time, the company has not clarified how likely Humble Choice codes for stores like Steam will be skipped in favor of Humble Launcher exclusives.]
“I’m not in a position to say f--- it to a large community of people who want to support us.”
The Humble storefront's 2010 kickoff was paired with indie-centric bundles, along with advertising about its support for non-Windows versions of games. Humble co-founder Jeffrey Rosen made a point of breaking down stats for original Humble Bundle purchases on an OS level—and made waves by pointing out how much more money Linux and Mac buyers were willing to spend on the earliest bundles' charity-specific costs than Windows buyers. This was also an era in which Humble participants pledged to make their games open source, should certain money thresholds be met.
Rosen, who remains on Humble's advisory board, was vocal about MacOS and Linux support as an indie game dev when blogging about production in 2008, telling fans:
If you're not supporting Linux and Mac OS X from a philosophical standpoint or for the fans, at least do it for the money. If you don't support non-Windows platforms, you're leaving a lot of cash on the table. I don't know about you, but I'm not in a position to just say f--- it to a large community of people who want to support us.
Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.
Promoted Comments
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I remember when Humble came out – they promised DRM-free games with a "pay what you want" price point. I loved both of those things and I very much loved being able to split the money between the publisher, developer, and charity. I was an avid customer of theirs and bought a fairly large number of the first series of bundles. They were humble, they raised a lot of dosh for charity, and they were good. They had a large banner of support behind them and attracted a lot of attention from the right sides of the internet.
The first change came when I noticed to my horror that some of them were "steam only" items that I had bought in a later bundle. I dropped an email to support asking where the drm-free download link was. The reply that came back simply said "Sorry, there isn't one".
Second, they started to introduce barriers to participation. That "Pay what you want" became "Pay $1 for this, $10 for that, and $50 for the other. Pay more than the mean to get these things". The structure changed to try to extract more money out of people (unsurprisingly).
Third, the sliders allowing you to move money around changed from being prominent to being hidden. The ability to pick your own charity (the British Heart Foundation in my case) became slightly harder to find. Rather than some games being Steam or DRM only, suddenly they almost all were. The linux and macos titles seemed ever rarer.
Now, fourthly, this. I don't want a subscription to games and I've never used their service. But this is enough – this frog knows when the water is getting hot. I'm going to download the lot of my library onto my zfs box, and not give them a penny again (and stick with gog.com, who certainly have their flaws, but are in comparison far better).
Edit: Also, as a PSA – you might like to know of this Pypi downloader for your humble library (which currently also works on Trove, apparently): https://pypi.org/project/humblebundle-downloader/ and its corresponding github repo here. -
For those using the Pypi downloader that was linked real early in the thread: you need to log in with your browser to Humble, and then transfer a cookie value.
Firefox won't let you inspect the value of cookies directly anymore. That's hidden from you, for no good reason that I can see. I downloaded "Cookie Quick Manager", which I plan to delete shortly because it asks for too many permissions, but it does work for this purpose. You want the cookie "_simpleauth_sess", I'm pretty sure for the root humble domain.... there's another cookie by that name for a subdomain, and I'm pretty sure that's the wrong one.
I tried and tried and tried to pass the value to the hbd script using the instructions to use -s and then double-quote the cookie value. It failed and failed and failed. I eventually realized that the cookie itself has enclosing quotes. I thought that was display nicety, but no, the quotes are actually part of the cookie. So I ended up doing it very slightly differently:Code:hbd -s '"long_cookie_value_of_random_alpha_hash"' --library-path target_dir --progressIf that's hard to read, I enclosed the string in single quotes, followed by the double quotes that are part of the cookie value. So it's single/double/long hash string/double/single. That works. -
WereCatf Ars Scholae Palatinaejump to postmalor wrote:Firefox won't let you inspect the value of cookies directly anymore. That's hidden from you, for no good reason that I can see. I downloaded "Cookie Quick Manager", which I plan to delete shortly because it asks for too many permissions, but it does work for this purpose. You want the cookie "_simpleauth_sess", I'm pretty sure for the root humble domain.... there's another cookie by that name for a subdomain, and I'm pretty sure that's the wrong one.You can actually just browse to the Humble Bundle - website, open web developer tools from Firefox's menu and open the "Storage" - tab to see the cookies for the domain. No, I agree it's not obvious to non-devs, but you don't necessarily need any addons for it.
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