Do read Camus' "Fall" - if memory serves right, it's what one of the protagonists started doing to mess with the unbearable rigidness of reality.

On a both more and less related note - my light-hearted comment mentioning GOG was apparently removed from the HBD YT video's comment section... it had quite a few upvotes on it too :|.

Reputation Changes:

GoG.com: + 50; Dealing with the negative aspects of having this kind of surprise put on them after pushing HARD for publicity of their game.

Humble Indie Bundle: +/- 0; Not their fault nor their concern.

Amanita Design: -135; +50 Dark Side Points; It's not a backstab to purchasers, but to abuse GoG's ambitious PR support like this is really bad form.

Myself: -20; I bought the HIB without knowing this scenario. Wish I could buy it directly from GoG a second time (with the knowledge that the money would stay away from AD since I already paid them for their development at a lower cost due to their surprise release.)

My [pent-up] feeling exactly.

You really don't tire of being ridiculous, do you?

You weren't BACKSTABBED, you over dramatic dipshit. You pre-ordered the game, and it was delivered, right? NO BACKSTAB.

It's Amanita's game. If they choose to offer it in a bundle on release day, that's their right. They haven't taken anything from you. They haven't changed what you bought. Fucking grow up.

Surely you don't find their practice are little bit unethical or dishonest? GOG also didn't knew about this bundle, thus they try to compensate their pre-order customer.

Dishonest? Certainly. I completely agree with that description. Or I would have before Amanita decided to give ever GOG pre-order buyer a free copy of Machinarium and the soundtrack and art book and everything else.

Overly dramatic nonsense whining about being backstabbed and then being carried over to Amanita's forum by the same idiot? That's just stupid.

For those that already purchased Machinarium at full price on GOG, a free copy is meaningless. As for the extras, will they be tied to our GOG account (to be downloaded tomorrow or five years from tomorrow) or will they be provided through a limited time only download link?

Thanks Amanita for offering the game in the HIB for a fair price. You care about your customers.

Was it a little tacky to release the game as "pay what you want" immediately after releasing here? Possibly. But this is hardly the first time multiple stores/outlets/websites have offered the same product at the same time for different prices... so I'm not sure it's really worth getting our torches and pitchforks over.

That said, I bought the game from HIB, but mainly because Humble offers native Linux clients and I like supporting their whole movement. Then again, during the same time-frame, I picked up Ultima 7 and 8, and bought a whole slew of GOG games last weekend, so it's kinda a wash.

Was it maybe in poor taste? Sure. Was it "backstabbing"? Not hardly.

To be fair he(assuming he) stated he was not a pre-orderie. He is outraged on behalf of all the pre-orderies.

The whole thing is quite odd. There is something to be said for asking why if you thought the game was worth x-dollars yesterday why its not longer worth that same amount just because someone else got a better deal? Some of it is rooted in some fairly selfish "I want what he got or better, but not less. Never less for me," logic.

On the other hand there is some creditable reason to feel deceived by reasonable expectations, and for it being really, really dumb thing for the dev's to do. Not only is it bad PR, but how do they expect to make more money on release day by offering it for free? That undercuts any other potential revenue stream being offered including GOG. Its stupid PR and finical suicide. If thats what they were going for then well done!

Mmm, unfair practices. This would never pass in a brick and mortar store and the BBB would have some choice words.
I totally agree. Had this been a brick and mortar deal in Canada, BBB would step in for unfair business practices.

Umm... Illiteracy AND anger, eh, Crassmaster? You might want to learn to hold your tongue, at least until you can bring yourself to think. I didn't preorder it, either. Frankly, I wasn't especially interested in it. It looked like something I might like to get down the line, but I had no interest in getting it now.

Thanks to the bundle, I changed my mind about that entirely. Myself, I'm very happy with the bundle. Regardless, it's pretty fucked up how they went about doing this. I'd be pretty depressed right now if I got the bum deal in return for being an early adopter. Not that that sort of thing isn't deplorably common, mind you. I've had more than my fair share of that, it's why everyone waits for 75% off sales on GOTY editions, but it sucks when it involves indie developers.

I had 3079 and Towns before they were in the Indie Royale Alpha Bundle. Thankfully, I was able to pay a low enough price to justify buying it for Wyv and Keep. I played a very broken version of Super Meat Boy, and was stuck on the final level for hours until realizing that the reason I couldn't complete it was because there was supposed to be a boss following you through the level that wasn't there. Several achievements required me to restart the game to unlock. Just after the major bugs were dealt with (about three weeks later), it went 75% off, and early adopters like myself paid 33% off essentially to bug test.

The fact that they'd release a Botanicula bundle out of the blue to coincide with the release of the game, I'm amazed they didn't think the people who pre-ordered would be a little peeved, and that nearly all of them would have some desire to refund their order and get it through the bundle instead. That was a serious oversight, and bad form. What sucks even more is that you need to pay $5 to get Steam keys this time, and the average payment to get everything started out high enough that... well, this would've been a bit more tolerable if $1 could buy the whole bundle for everybody.

I think the best form of damage control would involve giving complementary complete bundles to those who pre-ordered, and perhaps something extra, like a free code for the next bundle as well, or a copy/discount of Retro City Rampage as a show of good faith, I don't know. They meant well, and it's better than no Humble Botanicula at all, but it was the approach; they REALLY fucked up here, and it's really not cool.

Machinarium is part of the bundle, that's why it was included as a GOG extra. So it's no different than someone already owning Machinarium buying the bundle for Botanicula.
The fact he wasn't even a buyer tends to make him look even worse, in my opinion.

I'm not going to weep and nash my teeth over it or boycott them (they make great games) but that doesn't change the fact that their "mea culpa" is useless to me.

I don't know. I'd think it'd make someone less bias to be in a position like Roman5 and myself, who solely benefited from this bundle, rather than loyally supporting Amanita from the get-go.

It's true that "backstab" might be too strong a word. I'm willing to agree that what they did feels remarkably underhanded, whether or not it was intended in malice. They have all the right to make a bundle like this and release it whenever they want, true. Do you really think people who pre-ordered have no right to complain, simply because they received exactly what they paid for. Don't you feel people loyal enough to pre-order should have received a superior bargain for doing so, instead of the reverse being true?

Is it really immature to think that what they did, at the very least, should prove to be toxic in their relationship towards loyal customers and have a detrimental effect on any future pre-orders they do, knowing that they could just wait for a bundle that could show up as soon as day one?