Ach, that's right. Last time I bought one I did get one big Desura key. Sorted, the bundle is a complete miss now.

Actually, you can buy the bundle without being logged and it wouldn't be redeemed...
Maybe someone would be interested only in the Steam games. But yeah, it will be one key for Desura only (which is also the Royale key).

Bundle is live

And is live... Yaayy....

Bought the bundle. Not a great collection, many repeates, but for 2.22€ it was good enough for me.

Special thanks to Spoderman for the heads-up, which enabled me to grab the bundle right when it started and the price was still low enough to make it worthwhile. :) Incidentally, I just heard that Rod Humble (the guy with the EA past) was replaced as Linden Labs CEO by Ebbe Altberg (a manager from Yahoo). Wasn't Rod Humble the driving force behind the Desura takeover? I wonder how Desura will fare with someone in command (at Linden Labs) who has no former experience (or visible signs of interest) for computer games and their market.

Hmm... that is a it more worrying news. Rod Humble have worked on quite a few games, and did some experimental indies himself.

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,373/

So it was kind of safe in his hands.

I grabbed the Bundle coz surprisingly i didn't have any of the games yet. :D

For me it's the worst Indie Royale in a very long time. The interesting games are Steam-only and the rest are bundle repeats I already own.

Yes, and he also showed up in a GOG thread where people discussed their concerns about Linden Labs buying Desura. And it was quite reassuring to see that his GOG account was way older than his involvement with Linden Labs. ;)

That said, I have no idea how (in)dependent from LindenLabs Desura is in their day-to-say operations, and it's much too early to tell whether this change will have any repercussions for Desura. I am a bit concerned about the long-tem perspective though. When LindenLabs bought Desura, the explanation from the Desura guys was that they required a bigger company behind them in order to fund required improvements and further development. This means that Desura is probably not terribly profitable right now. And when Desura loses the CEO with a gaming history resumee that they installed three years ago, and replaces him with an ex-Yahoo manager whose main recent focus has been on social networks, it could be a sign that Linden changes their focus away from gaming environments, towards social media. But of course, this is extremely speculative at this point, we'll just have to wait and see.

Well, we all knew that.

Desura in many ways has itself to blame. People huddle around Steam for no other reason than it is the cool thing right now, which means that distributors really have to have a unique selling point to succeed in this market. GOG achieves this with its DRM-freedom, Humble Store by combining DRM-free with Steam keys, Origin with Battlefield, uPlay with Assassin's Creed and so on.

Desura had a great thing going as the go-to place for obscure DRM-free indies. It established itself pretty well when they started giving away keys with the early Humble Bundles.

Then they started compromising on their DRM-free values, which alienated their DRM-free fan base, and started filling up their store with useless shit, much of it barely alpha quality. Most of the mainstream stuff on Desura ended up simply displaying a Steam key from the client - a big no-no.

Desura had potential, but it refused to adhere to any kind of principles or standards, and that meant there was little reason for anyone to buy there as opposed to Humble Store, GOG or Steam. Gamersgate and GMG essentially live off their business as glorified Steam key resellers nowadays (GMG's store credit function has turned out to be a dud given that most games don't support it), and Desura doesn't even have that.

Desura claims to have 10,089 members. Given the amount of bundles and the low prices, it's very likely a loss at the moment. Furthermore, diluting the reputation by selling alpha software which got the spotlight in bundles will worry other developers.

The could also have taken someone from Blackberry...

This, basically. Although I don't think people huddle around Steam for coolness. Steam gives every impression of being a dependable piece of infrastructure. End users think they can depend on it, it's the Amazon of games in the sense that people feel they can rely on it after having been burned by other sellers.

10.089 are not very much and as you said many of them are probably people who only use Desura as a backup service for their bundles. I think I own about 250 games on Desura, but I've never bought a single one directly from them.

Here you can find the numbers for Defender's Quest. It's a high-profile indie title and they only sold 53 copies on Desura. I think they are far, far away from being profitable.

Well, it's no less or more reliable than uPlay, Origin, GFWL or indeed Desura's own infrastructure. Steam is just as prone to downtime as the others and the client is also just as much an unholy mess. But as I say, Steam has the benefit of hype that drives potential buyers of Battlefield and Titanfall to irrationally scream "No Steam, No Sale".

Desura's client is actually a fairly robust piece of software - Desurium even more so - and that's the saddest thing really. Desura gets more or less everything right in terms of infrastructure - including making it possible to avoid the client altogether - and then fucks it up with the business side of it.