Media giant IGN announced today that it has acquired Humble Bundle, the company best known for selling packs of indie games at pay-what-you-want prices. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This is potentially a big deal for game developers, since Humble has expanded beyond its bundling business to publish games, pay devs to make games for its subscription-based monthly game club, maintain a subscription-based online game trove, and operate an online game storefront.

However, a press release confirming the deal also noted that Humble will continue to operate independently in the wake of the acquisition, with no significant business or staffing changes. It will have some degree of support from IGN (which is itself owned by digital media giant J2 Global), specifically in terms of accelerating growth and raising more money for charity...

more at https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/307546/Humble_Bundle_has_been_acquired_by_media_giant_IGN.php

My first thought is, what an ethical nightmare that has to be as now IGN has a direct financial incentive to promote games they can sell. As well a platform they could likely favor (PC) over others.

To be fair you could say the same thing about Game Informer, which is even more tightly bound to GameStop. But somehow Game Informer's editorial standards to me always seemed considerably higher than IGN's.

Edit: Just remembered this isn't the first time IGN has done this. Back in 2004 they launched Direct2Drive, which was (still is I guess?) a direct competitor to Steam. They sold D2D to Gamefly in 2011. It should be noted that Humble Bundle also publishes games, which I don't believe D2D does

Edit: IGN Has revealed their intended plans to maintain editorial independence

To get more specific, we're going to use a two-pronged approach to ensuring editorial integrity when it comes to Humble Bundle. First, we will keep a rigid separation between IGN's editorial team and the Humble Bundle team. Second, we will provide full disclosure whenever IGN creates content about a game, bundle, or subscription created by or funded by Humble Bundle. This is the same effective approach we already use when IGN creates content about the products sold by our advertisers and commerce partners.

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/ign-on-humble-bundle-purchase-editorial-integrity-is-something-we-take-very-seriously

I guess that's about as good as you can expect, but I don't find it terribly reassuring.

Hmm, hopefully things don't change too much. These days, I find myself looking outside of Steam a lot and Humble is one of them.

This might be even weirder than when GameStop became a games publisher.

I don't actually think this will lead to anything particularly different but it does just feel kind of unpleasant.

Disclosure: I've been subscribing to the monthly Humble Bundle for most of this year.

Yeah...look, I'm not about to scream "ethics," and honestly I don't care how IGN rates games because I don't follow IGN and I never have, but this feel weird AT BEST. I remember the first time I heard a games podcast advertise a game (it was PC Gamer, probably close to a decade ago at this point), and thinking that it was kind of gross. This is just a whole other level.

Wait what.

I'd expect humble to sell of ign's article writing staff om the next bundle.

I liked humble when it was about charity only, once it started being a regular store it didn't feel as right to me honestly. Now I don't see how anybody could take IGN seriously as a review front, well not that many did anyway though(just saying lol).

@oursin_360: I kind of get that, but you can still choose a portion (up to 100%) of every purchase to go to charity.

@bladeofcreation: yeah but I dont like the idea of using charity to kick start an actual business, that obviously was profitable enough to be sold it seems. A bit off putting to me.

I bought every “core” humble bundle from the first, go through their store over steam when I can because of the charity angle, and sometimes will sub for a month if I want the game being presented.

But this seems gross. Not because of IGN, I haven’t gone there in probably over a decade and could care less about their critics’ integrity. But because Humble had the story of being an upstart, developer- and charity friendly little company. It made me want to support them; god damn it make me loyal to a #brand. Now this muddies that feel-good atmosphere just a bit.

Well said.

If this causes IGN to stop constantly spamming articles where it's just a bunch of affiliate links to Amazon & Best Buy, there might be a net positive result.

edit:

Totally.

@oursin_360: I see what you mean. Yeah I get that. Also I do find it a bit uncomfortable that they have a slider for how much of a "tip" you want to give the Humble Bundle company itself.

If this happened in 2012-2015 i would be bummed out. Every humble bundle was an event, people were talking about it on steam and making sure that no one missed a new bundle appearing. For the last 2 years , bundles have had a lot of repeats or are just way more expensive, and the 1$ tier has been getting worse imo.

Still, think it's kinda weird that a review outlet is now actively making a profit on some of the games they are reviewing. That seems pretty shady to me. As Jeff said: They are not part of the game industry, they are reporting on the game industry. When you start selling games, you suddenly put your review outlet in the industry that you're supposed to cover.

As long as I can still max out the charity slider, I don't really care.

Humble Bundle hasn't really had anything worth buying for years, atleast for me. Besides there are other/better ways to support charity. If anything HB just made people that otherwise might not have supported charity to have an incentive to.

I still don't understand how IGN came back and well... didn't really change at all.
I'd agree that IGN never seemed like a credible source for video game critic, imagine if they got bought up by GameStop?

Is that true of the store? I thought that was only the case for the bundles and a flat percentage is given to charity if you buy from the store.

@cameron: I stand corrected. I just checked. It gives you an option to give an additional 5% to charity.

Damn, that is ice cold. You don't allocate any of the proceeds to developers? You know, the human beings who put their time, labor, and capital into these games?

Oh, god no. Vidya-games just got a little bit shittier.

If it's an indie bundle I'll even it out a bit more since there's no assurance they got paid a salary for their work, and that money actually stands a chance of supporting the people who deserve it. What I was trying to get at though, was an "is that slider even going to be an option or is IGN just going to take a hard 10% cut from every purchase" sentiment.

@teddie: No slider for the Humble Store, though, as mentioned earlier.

Updated the OP with this new information.

IGN Has revealed their intended goal to maintain editorial independence

To get more specific, we're going to use a two-pronged approach to ensuring editorial integrity when it comes to Humble Bundle. First, we will keep a rigid separation between IGN's editorial team and the Humble Bundle team. Second, we will provide full disclosure whenever IGN creates content about a game, bundle, or subscription created by or funded by Humble Bundle. This is the same effective approach we already use when IGN creates content about the products sold by our advertisers and commerce partners.

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/ign-on-humble-bundle-purchase-editorial-integrity-is-something-we-take-very-seriously

I'm not sure this is possible, but I guess that's about the best you can hope for.

It'd be interesting to know if this was IGN's idea or their parent company's.

@slag: That doesn't seem all that great. They'll disclose when they're reporting on a bundle or whatever...but they'll still be reviewing games that are sold on the Humble store that aren't "created or funded" by Humble.

I have to imagine that this was the parent company's idea. It's so utterly lacking in self-awareness that it's hard to believe that actual video game reviewers would do this.

Not sure how I feel about this, been a supporter of the Humble Bundle for a while now. I have zero faith in IGN or the way they do business.

Also, Direct2Drive is seriously still a thing? Feel like that went down with the likes of Gamespy.

@bladeofcreation: yeah it doesn't seem all that great, but Humble sells so many games I think not reviewing any of them would be very impractical.

Maybe IGN should just give up any pretense of objectivity and drop reviews altogether. Go the Rooster teeth route or something.

While I'd like to blame the parent company, I think IGN itself may have founded direct2drive in the past. So clearly they don't care about how this looks.

I dunno, I don't really share the disdain for IGN so many other people have. I'm pretty neutral on them tbh. I can't recall much, if anything they've done to warrant such hate other than "giving games the wrong score," but that's just me. To each their own. On the flipside, they don't really do anything so exceptional that makes me "omg I need to check for all the latest news, reviews, and previews right there on IGN.com!"

I do think there's more than a little tonedeafness going on by whoever made this decision though. Surely someone involved in this decision knew how this would potentially look? Either way, despite how it may look, I have no current reason to distrust the statement IGN put out about keeping the departments separate. I'll certainly be on the lookout for anything fishy, but I'm not going to go into this assuming everyone and everything is corrupted already. I'm all for taking things with a grain of salt - because you should - but I think yelling "doom and gloom" is just as bad as blind faith.

As for Humble Bundle...meh? I've bought like maybe 3-4 bundles ever from them? I don't have any particular feelings about them either if I'm being honest. That said, it's equally weird for both parties if you ask me.

@slag: Yeah, I had no idea that they founded Direct2Drive before I read it here. I guess they really don't care how it looks.

As a business move, I give this an 8/10.

@therealturk: that's fuckin bullshit it deserves at least an 8.2

;-)

I mean, if the folks who visit IGN trust the editorial team, then this'll probably be okay for them. The folks who like to rail against sites for, well, anything, they'll go to toooooown, holy moly.

Yeah, so they now have direct incentives to give out good scores?
Yuck.

Way to ruin a cool thing.

Personally won't be using Humble after this. It's shady on a level that I'm just not comfortable with, even with the charity angle of the site.

I already give 0 shits about any opinions IGN has so as long as humble bundle stays awesome I'm happy

i mean would anyone actually notice the difference in their review scores lol? they already suck off literally everything.

would be interesting if the $1 tier gets cut off.

This doesn't seem like an especially big deal. Giant Bomb is owned by a huge media conglomerate, and you don't see them being pressured to cover CBS properties in any given way. There is such a thing as editorial freedom.

@xymox: why is shady about it now? Before you bought bundles of games for low prices. Now you can continue to do so.

@humanity:I think the queasiness for a lot of people, myself included comes from the fact that they started using Humble Bundle because they thought it was basically a non-profit designed to help charities. So it feels kinda gross to see them "cash out " per say. Imagine if your local YMCA sold out to LA Fitness. Or the Red Cross sold itself to Anthem . That'd feel pretty weird right?

Over the years it's become pretty clear that the charity aspect of it was really just a business strategy for them as a for profit entity (when they opened the "Humble Store" it became pretty clear to me), but selling out to somebody like IGN doesn't seem to really mesh well with what the public image of them was. IGN also has pretty different company values and tone than what I thought Humble Bundle had.

I'll admit one of the reason I used to sub here was that I liked that Whiskey Media was their own independent company. I like supporting the small guys. After the CBSi buyout I let it lapse. I don't blame the guys for a second for taking the buyout, I just I dunno, wasn't as inspired to keep subbing.

YMMV if that stuff matters to you or not, but that I think is a factor in why some people feel this deal was offputting. If that makes sense.

@berniesbc: CBS doesn't own any games retailers. They were a part of Viacom, which I think may have had its hands in games publishing back in the 90's, but at least currently CBS corp doesn't do any of that. At least that I know of. They do have metacritic which does aggregate reviews of CBS tv shows, but other than that I really don't think they have the same kind of proximity to any entertainment their journalism arms cover.

IGN certainly can maintain editorial freedom (although given they bought Humble Bundle for "synergies" and will disclose when they cover stuff that HB publishes or sells I doubt they are going to have a very strong "firewall"), but if nothing else this is definitely terrible optics.

@slag: CBS does have a property or two that has dabbled in the gaming market. If you’re okay with them having Star Trek games and a friend of the site on to talk about a CBS property video game, I’m curious why you thing it would be different for IGN if both they and HB remain independent.

I really don’t get how this is that different from Game Informer and GameSpot. I feel like people are letting their IGN bias get in the way of seeing this more objectively.

I get people not digging Humble Bundle going more for profit than charity these days but that isn’t a new thing, and wasn’t created by this move.

Game Informer seemed to do just fine with their relationship to THE gaming retailer in the US market, I have no reason to assume IGN will suddenly start giving favorable reviews to games they are connected to. If the business is structured ethically then there will not really be any direct incentive for them to review games sold by HB.

People may not like IGN but is it because they have done shady shit or is it because people here are looking for a different perspective from what IGN provides? If the latter, I think it’s fair to say that in general users here will be biased against this move. I don’t know if any real issues that IGN has had with integrity on this sort of stuff.

@berniesbc: The Bombcast has recently run ads for that hot new CBS property, Star Trek Discovery. I think the Beastcast has done ads for Young Sheldon. A recent GBE Playdate involved an old Star Trek game.

There are people on the staff who are definitely fans of Star Trek, I don't think any of them have just pretended to be long-time Trek fans just because they work for CBSi, but they have certainly advertised for properties owned by their parent company.

@opusofthemagnum:

Pretty big difference in degree for one. You are talking about a few games at best and those affected are affected through owned IP/published games.

The much much bigger landmine in my eyes is the storefront, IGN's parent now has financial incentive for probably very conservatively around half of the titles they cover and they have openly stated that the move was made to take advantage of the "synergies" HB offers. IGn already has things like amazon affiliate links buried into their articles, it would not shock me if a "go buy it now on Humble Bundle" button starts to directly appear in their reviews within the next 18 months.

So it's the rare exception versus the rule.

You're right isn't that different between GI and Gamestop and I acknowledged as much in the OP if you read it. I also stated that I felt GI's editorial standards were stronger than IGN's. What is also critically different to me at least is that Game Informer from conception was never intended to be anything other than what it is. IGN and Humble Bundle were separate entities with different mission objectives that now have arguably been both compromised somewhat. Few complained that Nintendo Power was essentially a hype rag for Nintendo products, but it never made a serious pretense that it wasn't. And personally I think there's room in the industry for hype outfits like Rooster Teeth. The same however isn't true at all of IGN which attempts to cultivate the perception that they are unbiased.

from their own mission statement http://corp.ign.com/

"We are the leading Internet media company focused on the video game and entertainment enthusiast markets. IGN caters to more than 68 million monthly users on our website and in our apps. Our English-language programming is followed by over 9 million subscribers on YouTube and 16 million fans on social networks. Our Snapchat edition reaches millions more each month.

For millions of fans, we have cemented our reputation as the authoritative voice on games and entertainment by delivering sharp opinions and ground-breaking visual content. For you, we offer the creativity, authenticity and relevance to help you engage our vital, premium audience."

The bottom line for me is I really don't care that much personally. I don't read/watch IGN and I've got plenty of other places to buy PC games than Humble Bundle. My interest is more about caring about the wellbeing of the games press and the games industry as an enthusiast who enjoys games. I don't think this move is good for the reputation or wellbeing of either of those. Maybe nothing bad happens, but whatever happens it's not a good look.