Latest Humble Bundle offers Bastion, Psychonauts, Limbo and more

In what may be its finest promotion yet, the latest Humble Indie Bundle kicked off today with five highly rated indie games for less than the price of one. In case you're unfamiliar with the formula, the service lets you set your own price for the titles involved. Pay less than the average rate (currently $7.38 and rising) and you'll get Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Psychonauts, Limbo and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. Pay more than the average price, and you'll get Bastion as well.

All five games work on Windows, Mac and Linux with modest requirements that should play nice with most modern machines (Amnesia: The Dark Descent might not run well on integrated graphics or very low-end cards). Bastion, Limbo, Sword & Sworcery, and Amnesia were considered some of last year's best games -- indie or otherwise -- with average review ratings in the mid to high 80s. Psychonauts dates back to 2005 and despite its relatively poor sales, it also has very high ratings:

89 Bastion (action-RPG) - Wikipedia, GameTrailers, Metacritic87 Sword & Sworcery (adventure) - Wikipedia, GameTrailers, Metacritic90 Limbo (puzzle platformer) - Wikipedia, GameTrailers, Metacritic85 Amnesia (survival horror) - Wikipedia, GameTrailers, MetacriticPsychonauts (adventure platformer) - Wikipedia, GameTrailers, Metacritic

You'll have to spend more than $1 if you want at Steam key and paying less than that doesn't leave the organization much profit after transaction fees anyway. Your payment can be split anyway you want between the event organizers, the developers and charities including the EFF and Child's Play. So far, 145,000 gamers have spent over a million bucks (with 14 days to go!) and the highest submission is $3,000. Windows users have spent an average of $6.81, $8.87 for Mac and $11.39 for Linux.

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Minecraft creator publicly criticizes EA over indie game bundle

Well-known game developer Markus “Notch” Persson has caused quite a stir on Twitter today. The outspoken Minecraft creator tweeted his thoughts regarding Electronic Arts releasing an “indie bundle” of games on Steam, telling the company in no short order that they aren’t an indie developer and they should stop trying to ruin everything.

In follow-up tweets, Persson says that indies are saving gaming while EA is methodically destroying it and that he doesn’t even consider his own studio (Mojang) an indie anymore. He doesn't have a problem with the titles in the bundle, calling them good, he's simply questioning EA.

As news of his messages has spread, Persson has since tweeted that Twitter quotes are not news and that the platform shouldn’t be considered a news source. He seems to be a bit perturbed by all of the media attention, but when you are a public figure with nearly 680,000 followers, people listen to what you have to say.

CNET compares the gaming industry to that of the music industry where there are a handful of major labels and a multitude of independent firms. The publication says that most games created for mobile or console-based services like Xbox Live Arcade are considered independent while big name studios like Activision Blizzard, Take-Two and EA are typically classified as major publishers.

The indie bundle from EA contains six games: DeathSpank, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, Gatling Gears, Shank, Shank 2 and Warp. The titles were developed by independent studios and are published by EA. The studio is offering a 70 percent off promotion through May 9 for anyone purchasing the bundle.

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Posted in: bundle,creator,criticizes,indie,Minecraft,publicly