And this is why it works. The individual profit from every purchase is NON IMPORTANT.

They go to quantity, not quality of sales. In total, they are always in profit, and that counts.

And again, if they didn't want anybody to buy their games for 0.01 , they wouldn't set that price point.

And then there are also some people, who don't give a cent to the developers or as Tip, but all for Charity.

Even when the price rises, it is not said, that those people give anything as a Tip to the provider.

I don't think any business person would actually want people to buy at that price point, but the main thing is, it's allowed.

Also, if people complained about others spending too much, it'd be the opposite end of the same argument.

Does anyone have facts on what the running costs are for the provider (on a per-user basis)? They cannot be terribly high, otherwise all those bundles would have lost them a lot of money (what's the usual tip the organizers receive? 1$? 0.5$?)

I'm not trying to be negative, but why is this bundle called Indie Gala when not one game in it is actually indie?


Also, about the price, it's nobody's business but yours what you pay for those games.
Just don't kid yourself that you're actually supporting anything by paying less than a dollar.

Depends on the definition of Indie really. One could easily argue that Lead & Gold, East India Company & Omegalodon are indie games (don't know enough about Praetorians to make a comment on that one). Those games are made by independent companies, but published by Paradox. Much like Bastion, Shank & LIMBO, really (published by a big company, but made by an independent company). Paradox itself is a bit trickier. Paradox is not ruled by share owners who want to see profit at all cost, it is owned by 2 persons (if my memory serves at least), and thus you could argue that it is an independent publisher, and thus by the definition of indie from the music industry, games by it count as Indie. And as for Elven Legacy & Majesty 2, those were made by InoCo, which is owned by 1C. I don't know if 1C could be considered indie or not, as I don't know enough about it,.

It's made by Pyro Studios, the same guys that made Commandos.

Only when the average price gets too low, it means that they may start loosing some money on it. And if average price would be below cost, than we wouldn't see any more bundles.
I'd say it's like Dawn of war 2 in ancient times.

'
But is it an independent company, or a company that has to listen to its shareholders

Wikipedia says "Private":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyro_Studios

The Humble guys said that anything below a dollar is costing them money. And they have torrents that take of the bandwidth loads. I recall some devs saying putting their games on Steam saved them a lot in bandwidth (one of the reasons Steam is so popular with devs).

But hey, if people what to rationalize being cheap, that is there thing. But damn those greedy publishers!

I have at least a passing interest in most of these games (and don't actually own any of them), so it's time to try to scrape together six bucks or so.

Thinking that games made or published by Paradox are indie is a bit of a stretch, imo. According to your definition, Half LIfe 2 or any other game from Valve is indie too, since AFAIK Valve is owned only by 1 guy.

To me, indie means games developed and published independently, by a small group of people. And Paradox, no matter who it's owned by, is not really small any longer. Neither is 1C, since it's the main Russian game company.

It's not really rationalising, it's just pointing out that it's within the rules they set, if people pay the minimum, then they are allowing it. If they didn't want that to happen, they'd set an acceptable minimum (like the groupees bundles do).

If they wanted to count on a profit from every sale made, they wouldn't allow paying below that cost.

Even better - without Pay What You Want publicity, Humble Bundle owners would NEVER make this much money as they do.

But hey, let's just let SimonG feel better about himselft (again).