Humble Games Wasn't Killed, It Was Murdered

Today, the story of how Humble rose, spawned a publishing division, struggled through acquisition by IGN Entertainment, and how it all came crashing down.

Sources:

01:08 Humble Games Gutted
04:45 What’s a Ziff Davis?
06:16 Humble's Rise
08:11 Why Ziff Davis Did It
09:50 The Shambling Corpse of Humble Games

[abbiearcher]

This seems to be a repeating theme.

1. Company gets successful doing what it does
2. Gets bought out by company that fundamentally doesn't understand the industry
3. Company gets gutted and loses all the people who actually knew what they were doing.
4. Company wonders why it's not a money printer like the advisors said it would be.

[Surkk]

Kinda proves that video games are like growing wine grapes and corpos seem to be more interested in growing bean sprouts.

[EmileeKieffer]

Oh hey I'm the Emilee from this video lol! After almost 3 months, I'm still looking for a job after all this! The state of game development is truly fucked right now unfortunately. Glad that people are still talking about this honestly, it's been a difficult time not just for me but for so many devs who've been impacted over the last couple of years and I hope we keep talking about the multiple mass layoffs that have happened not just to all of us at Humble Games, but across the entirety of the game industry. Thanks for this, it's appreciated 💖

[Absnerdity]

Humble Bundle was murdered when it was sold to IGN to begin with. When IGN first took over, they FORCED the numbers, giving charities only 5% (this specifically was the "Against Asian Hate" yaoi bundle)!! Once they started letting you change the distribution they were still forcing you to give money (20%!!) to Humble, taking from charities. That was when I broke partnership with them and never bought from them again. Humble was HUGE and didn't need that money from users, they let you give it all to charity if you chose and they STILL had tons of money. IGN not letting you give it to charity and taking it for themselves felt so sleazy.

[SticksAandstonesBozo]

I just don’t get how we continue to see the same stories of suits whose daddy’s gave them careers treat gaming development like it’s just a normal retail business.

[realNoMee]

So basically.... Ziff Davis saw video games making money, wanted that money, bought the publisher despite not understanding how video games work, realized it didn't make them money fast enough and threw it in the trash. Fucking with the lives of innumerable people in the process. Awesome.

[AoshiStark]

Things we have learned from the past decade from the industry:
- Always publish your own game if you can help it
- If a venture capitalist comes knocking, tell them to fuck off
- Don't sell your company/IP to anyone without first reading the contract THOROUGHLY or hiring a Lawyer to do it for you
- If there's something in that contract you don't like, CHANGE IT or tell the investor to fuck off
- They want your company/IP/game because they lack the creativity and passion to make anything themselves. This gives you a lot more leverage than you realize.

[UGotSerbed]

I unsubscribed from the Humble platform the instant they pivoted from being a non-profit charity to a for-profit publisher, that was the writing on the wall. What a hare-brained decision.

[davidcummins]

I don't care so much if a big soulless company like Ubisoft hamstrings themselves, but it stings when high quality indies are affected like Humble and Anapurna. I wish CEOs would stop buying companies that they don't understand or care about. It screws over fans, employees and to a certain extent the acquiring companies too!

[HalfLegendary]

2024 have been a very exhausting year with the numerous stories of big corpos ruining all the fun of gaming companies and just pumping profits over everything. It's like we can't have anything anymore without them coming in and screwing us over and not suffering any kind of real retaliations.

Good coverage as always Michael. Thanks for always keeping us informed.

[CrowMercury]

Moral of the story: Ziff Davis is a MASSIVE clown. Like 90% of the people who have money.

[blkwng]

How in the hell have we allowed a world where copyright is abused in order to stop creativity and also monopolozation laws are just for show?! This type of companies have so much freaking power under them and their subsidiaries that by the time the law tries to do something they're too big to even face. Wtf is going on!?

[RomanBellic-ezfh]

I trust more the local hobo bringing my $50 change for cleaning my windshield than the ceos/higher ups not laying off anyone because of their own mistakes.

[MisterNightfish]

Anyone else just done with these corpo speak statements? They're so vapid and pointless.

[synmad]

Everyday we wake up and see hundreds or thousands of people have their livelihoods threatened and their works unfulfilled because some guy whose work is to Seek Growth Opportunities By Maximizing Portfolio Synergy doesnt know what the fuck he's doing. I wish I believed in Hell

[draon]

8:52 - This goes for corporation businesses like Loblaws, they don't understand what makes worker be more productive, and the command chain down the line can be ruined because of pressure. HR pressuring managers or departments to do something, which causes the management to turn on each other, or their subordinates to make them out as scapegoats, and workers at the lowest levels starts banding up into groups and 'throwing' sacrificial victims' under the bus to preserve their positions.

[Kandralla]

I think it was Ryan Scott (Computer Gaming World/Games for Windows Magazine) who talked about Ziff Davis firing a bunch of people by sending them offsite for a company paid lunch where they told them that they were no longer employed and to not go back to the office.

[PhyonesArc]

The older I grow, the more I realise that all the nice companies that I like are owned by soulless vultures and people who have absolutely no idea what they are doing.
Every year things get worse, games get worse, companies I looked up to get revealed to be complete messes... Yes, money rules the world, but at this point I feel naive just for believing that not everyone wants to burn everything to the ground.
How have we ended up here? How have we ended in a Cyberpunk dystopia? What did I miss in my life?
Massive exaggeration, but it feels almost as if we're drifting slowly into another dark age where everything gets worse, all the joy gets sucked out of everything that might be fun, where the very concept of happiness is antithetical to existance.
We live in sad times.

[marblemunkey]

"You've probably never heard of [Ziff Davis]" holy 💩 am I old...

[TwoSevenX]

Ziff-Davis has been sketch since the days of Electronic Gaming Monthly aka the game magazine that was a money laundering operation for the mob and had twice as many ad pages as content pages per issue.