So, those of you who enjoyed the Humble Bundle(s) might get a kick out of this:
http://www.indieroyale.com
It's a pay-what-you-want bundle, but there's a minimum price (currently sitting at around $3 USD). Whenever somebody purchases it at minimum price, the price goes up. When people buy it at higher prices, it goes down. As you can probably imagine, this means that getting in early will likely get you a better deal.
The games being sold right now are A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda, Gemini Rue, Sanctum and Nimbus. I have yet to play any of the games except for Sanctum (and there's already a thread devoted to that), so all I can say is that they look like good games. According to the site, they'll be selling four games like this every two weeks, with pauses between sales, so even if you're not interested in the current lineup, it's worth keeping an eye on it.
Seems they're having some technical difficulties at the moment, as a result of them getting a lot of traffic, so the site's a bit sluggish. Hopefully they'll resolve them soon.

So the price will just keep going up, but if everyone payed one penny more than minimum for it, the minimum would go down? Silly.
I don't like the concept as much as the other bundles, and there are no games there that catch my eye, so I think I'll pass on this one.

I would normally buy this pack, because Sanctum seemed like a nice game but I won't.
I really don't like it how they ripped off Humble Bundle but gave it a minimum price. Makes them look like greedy bastards in my eyes.

Not quite. The price will stay the same. It only goes down if you pay significantly more than minimum. There's a little graph explaining it when you go to the page to buy it.


As much as I love the HIB, I don't think it's is a rip-off of it. Pay-what-you-want bundles have become popular since HIB's success (I would link you to some, but I'm posting this from my phone). There's some good points to the HIB having competition, too. First of all, these guys are doing sales frequently enough that they can support more games, and, for that matter, lesser-known games. That's really helpful for indies trying to get a business started, especially when one of the next bundles is going to be games looking for alpha funding. Secondly, I don't think the minimum price is actually a bad thing. Smaller games are being seriously devalued lately - people expect anything short of AAA quality to be $10 tops. Bundles like the HIB, which let people pay incredibly low prices, probably aren't helping that. On the other hand, this model encourages people to drive the price up. I'll give you this much, though: they aren't very clear about how much of the money actually goes to the developers, and unlike the HIB, none of it goes to charity.

I definitely agree with everything you said here. I don't think that HIB-like bundles are a bad idea, they're all contributing to small indie developers (hopefully I'll get there someday) and sporty competition never hurt anyone but I'm not to fond of this particular bundle because it looks like they made it only because they wanted a piece of indie pie and nothing else.

i heard that previously there a guy who bought like 500 copies for 1 cent each and sold them to other people (or Traded i should say) or more expensive stuff.

Regardless i don't see it as greedy, i mean you're buying 4 indie games, Maybe bad quality maybe good quality for the same price of a Crap game on Sale or even a Magazine.

I have always had my doubts over giving to charity this way anyway. I have always thought that the best way to actually get some charity done is to hand the hobo or the African child the money/vaccine yourself. I don't like having my money funnelled through all the administration of a corporate charity only to be meagre resemblance of itself on the other side. I respect the fact that the money is PROBABLY going to a good cause. But charities never do one thing at a time, and it's often their subtext that I find questionable anyway.

If I were to buy the HIB myself (which I don't, I can't use online payment systems), I would give very little to the charities before thoroughly checking them out first, and even then I would be hesitant to giving them more than the developers anyway. To me the IndieRoyale is cutting out a feature that would be more time consuming than it was worth in the first place.

I don't want to spark a big discussion on the ethics of giving to charity, but if I thought I had money to give away (or money at all), I would go out and give it away myself anyway.

Honestly, when buying HIB I always gave developers 100%. I'm not too fond of charities, they go to a good cause but I prefer supporting the industry that I plan to bind my life and soul with.

Just saying this is set up by gamasutra and co -> They already have their slice of the gamedev pie.

Erm, yeah, Jack, I think you're still a little misunderstanding...
Even aside from the fact that Gamasutra are behind this baby, the system they've set up is absolutely fantastic for independent developers!
Indie Royale is set up to release a set of four(or more, it would appear, as the "Really BIG Bundle" coming up in 27 days would suggest) quality indie games that are somewhat under the radar of the average indie buyer EVERY FORTNIGHT!
This is fantastic!
No one can deny the value of at least upwards of $10000 from an audience that was never going to buy the game otherwise, and the rate at which games will be churned through is good for two reasons:
1. players are perfectly happy to throw a few dollars at a couple of games that may or may not be good, but they get to decide for themselves, because the games they like are bound to be included at one point or another. Players will start to think of it as something not dissimilar to the time-honoured tradition of buying a subscription to a PC/game mag so that they can check out demos of various flavours of games.
2. Because of the huge number of games that will pass through Indie Royale within the next year, many developers who would have been doomed to fail from under-exposure will get a chance to try their strength on the market. Sure, there are award handouts like the IGF(which has had a massive 570 entries this year, and that's counting the Pirate Kart as one game!), but the number of quality games is now far too huge to give the coverage that most developers need to stay afloat.

EDIT: Besides, the games it has to offer at the moment are pretty much awesome, and I commend them for bringing them to light. Sure, Gemini Rue won the IGF student showcase back in 2010, but I reckon that still only got it a relatively small increase in attention, as it would still only be bought by adventure game fans. The other games, however, are far more obscure, with the possible exception of Sanctum, which got a little coverage for its novel mechanics.
Basically, as long as they keep on bringing AMAZINGly fun games like Nimbus to my attention, they have my full support as a consumer, regardless of what other positive influences they will have on the indie scene.

I'm not saying that this bundle is a bad thing in any way, it's great that more indie developers get the opportunity to earn some extra cash so they can continue doing what they do. I'm all up for that.

I genuinely apoligise for asking this, but what are you saying?

I guess I'm talking about the idea behind starting this bundle. While it's money go to a good cause of supporting some great indie games, unlike HIB, a sizable portion of those money also goes into straight IRB holders pockets and it seems like that is what their main priority, not charity, not indie support.

It most likely doesn't make any sense but that's the feeling I've got about them.
EDIT: I don't say they're bad, I'm just saying that I personally don't like them.

While I totally understand what you mean, I think that these guys are as good as you're going to get. Publishing is a necessary step in a game's life, and publishers are perfectly entitled to get money for the job. For some reason, your response to these bundles puts me in mind of someone boycotting a hot-dog stall because their first concern is making money, not providing you with something to eat.

A publisher willing to publish Indie Games is a valuable thing worth giving money to, they're rarer yet than the developers themselves.