it's crazy that LLM usage solidly and easily killed Humble Bundle and NaNoWriMo, two organizations which had racked up ridiculous amounts of goodwill and hype before they decided to pee all over their own feet
perhaps this is premature on the part of humble bundle but i will be quite surprised if it recovers from "we laid off almost everyone with a brain and then released the most broken and unwanted website update ever"
Nov 15, 2026, 12:21 AM@lucky :vi_fon: Humble sold themselves out long before the AI bubble, all the way back when they sold themselves to IGN
they constantly shrunk the definition of humble as if it was just name recognition and didn't mean anything
@clarfonthey @lucky They kinda lost us when they dropped the "indie" from their name.
@clarfonthey @lucky Yeah, I love how they kept the thing saying pay what you want when that was absolute bollocks since it hasn't been pay what you want in a long time.
It was genuinely pay what you want and then they made it a dollar minimum because of people buying tons of bundles for nothing and then they got bought out, then again I think, and it became what it is now which admittedly there were still some good deals sometimes but yeah, pay what you want? Lies.
@retrosponge @clarfonthey @lucky a dollar minimum make sense. All payment processor charge like 25¢ + 4%. People paying 1¢ would nothing to dev or charity and cost humble money. Having a minimum matching the payment processor fee would be weird, bring nothing to dev and charity and would expose some internal info. A floor of one dollar is reasonable and solve theses issues.
@gkrnours @clarfonthey @lucky Oh I never had a problem with that. Assholes ruin everything.
@retrosponge @clarfonthey @lucky I feel like the “pay what you want, get $x worth of stuff” advertising probably broke advertising laws in some countries when they made that change.
You could only get $x worth of stuff if paying above a certain minimum otherwise they’d remove items, making it no longer worth the advertised value.
@retrosponge @clarfonthey @lucky humble bundle has been beat the average for the actual bundle since what - humble bundle two?
Frankly it is just entitlement to complain about things somebody else worked hard for not being free.
There are many things that have sucked for a while (focus on major publishers, fixing the cuts, taking an point out of paying more than necessary, etc), but if your concern is that they are not handing out presents anymore ....
Nov 15, 2026, 1:00 AM@lucky what did i miss out on?
@bell they rolled out an unprecedented "website redesign" that removed a bunch of features like "seeing more than 5 games in your library at once" and "having 2FA codes" and also introduced security holes like "changing somebody else's email or password for them"
Nov 15, 2026, 1:03 AM@lucky what a clown show. a shame too, because some of their bundles are really well priced
@lucky I recommend https://writingmonth.org for anyone who'd like a place to share writing goals, and not deal with any LLM nonsense. @amin
Nov 15, 2026, 3:11 AM@lucky In case I'm not the only one wanting to distance myself from HumbleBundle, I finally found a way to request my account to be deleted there: https://dsar.humblebundle.com/
@lucky
All of open source lately, for some reason:
This is a systematic attack. Bribes and threats, strategically targeted. Egotistical jerks funded and amplified out of proportion, favored by algorithms and handed opportunities, while the good ones get stifled and burn out.
Hostile cultural takeover.
We can even think of it as a type of zombie virus or pod person takeover. This behavior, the culture seeking to normalize itself and drag people down, leaving not just the tools but the SKILLS in fewer and fewer hands without regard to what that kind of brain drain means for the long-term stability of civilization, or the damage that will be caused by a global cyberpunk remix of the Great Depression. The gambling addiction effect, weaponized into a cult. Just so the few who exploit the whole situation adroitly will be left holding all the cards.
@lucky I logged in just to check, and everything still works. I was concerned that I could only see 4 books at a time, but switching the pseudo-tab at the top to "Bundles" fixed that.
I'm glad to see they didn't fix the single most annoying thing on the site: having to get a code emailed to me. </sarcasm>
I really wish devs who spend a Yuge amount of time and money recreating a site would do more than just change all the GIFs, and add AI data-thieving.
@lucky Humble Bundle killed? I haven't checked it in a while, but what happened?
Nov 15, 2026, 11:59 AM@Firesphere @lucky They replace their website with some vibe coded monstrosity with 0 security.
Nov 15, 2026, 5:34 AM
@lucky@mastodon.nz Is there a Humble Bundle story? I know what NaNoWriMo did (that was what 3 years ago?) I kind of stopped paying to Humble Bundle... Oh well. I don't think it was anything they did, just um wasn't really interested any more.
@JigmeDatse @lucky Same here. The last time they had something that I actually found interesting, it had like a $30 minimum or something, and for that I could go buy the print/ebook combo directly from No Starch. (Just using that as an example, since No Starch and O'Reilly used to be my Humble Bundle catnip)
@lucky interesting that you bring up the urination... because the black vulture, coragyps atratus, does the same thing.
Really.
@knowprose @lucky Yea, but it's supposed to do that. Helps with keeping bacteria down if I remember right (important for carrion eaters).
Nov 15, 2026, 3:09 PM@lucky
NaNoWriMo hadn't had good will for years because of their support for groomers (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/02/creative-writing-nanowrimo-to-close-after-20-years)