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Humble seems to have accidentally revealed the games from its first "Humble Choice", which will replace Monthly on Dec 6
As previously discussed here, Humble Monthly is switching to a new model with no "mystery games" where you'll be able to choose which ones you want to keep from a set selection.
It looks like the games were inadvertently revealed already (image link), so the first month's options will probably be:
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- Blasphemous
- Void Bastards
- Phantom Doctrine
- Dead In Vinland
- Horizon Chase Turbo
- Dark Future: Blood Red States
- Desert Child
- Aegis Defenders
- X-Morph: Defense
If that's an interesting set of games to you, you'll probably want to subscribe to Humble Monthly now to be grandfathered in on the "Classic" plan, which will let you keep all 10 games every month for $12/month (and you should be able to "pause" if you don't like a particular month). Otherwise, the plan options that will be available after Dec 6 are more expensive for fewer choices.
This is an absolutely fantastic deal. Even if we take each game at its historical low sale price rather than retail, it's a shockingly good value for $12 USD with the classic plan. Even $20 for the premium plan, where you choose 9 of the 10, is still incredibly good.
This bundle costs almost one TENTH of the historical lows for the games. Not their full retail prices, mind you, but their steepest discounts to date.
Another way to look at this whole thing: if I divide the $12 classic plan cost out by game, I'm essentially paying a meager $1.20 for Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Another way to look at it: if I go to Steam to buy the original Tomb Raider (you know, the 23-year-old game that started the franchise?) it costs $0.97. That's awfully close to $1.20, which is covering the full cost of a game that came out just last year.
I realize at this point I sound like a Humble sockpuppet account, but I'm just a standard gamer who likes bargains (okay, maybe a little too much). I will say, to counterbalance my delight, that as a new Humble subscriber, I'm already feeling... well... overwhelmed? I picked up the November bundle, am not even close to finishing what I want to play from it, and already there's another batch of 10(!!!) great looking games looming on my horizon. And then a month from that there will be 10 more! And then 10 more!
I fully realize that this is a wonderful, amazing problem to have (too many games!) and the solution is easy (either stop buying them or stop feeling obligated to play them!), but I think I'm going to stick around simply because of how good a value this is.
Given that I can afford the monthly fee without sweating, I'm going to stay subscribed, but I'm just going to have to accept the fact that my backlog is only going to grow, only now instead of me feeding it with mostly low-tier bundle fodder, it's instead going to be filled with significantly more appealing, high-profile titles.
I also think it might be neat to set up a sort of Tildes Steam key exchange/giveaway system. I know for a fact that I won't ever play some of the games I'm getting each month, so I'd rather my game go "to a good home" here than some random person on Steamgifts. It helps me keep my backlog less cluttered and it helps someone else get a game they hopefully like. Win-win!
This is the problem with the Humble model and why I stopped getting them… You just don't play any of this stuff.
My humble buys are always just maxed out EFF donations and that's all. I probably spent ~$300 on humble bundles since their inception, and I've played four games from it, THREE of them from the exact same "Humble Freedom Bundle" which was the historical best and highest quality bundle ever. The rest I've always either already had or just wasn't interested.
I have a steam library worth easily thirty times what I've paid for it. But… yeah, what of it if I don't play any of them?
Correct, which is also why I'm steering away from models like these. Humble Monthly is actually better than others because it allows you to own the games. Services like Uplay+ or EA Access don't, but the fact is that I'm never going to play this many different games. I'm someone who settles on one game and then plays that one game quite a lot with friends, occasionally playing a singleplayer game in between.
The whole buy more, pay less per product but obviously more in total scheme is extremely effective at getting people to buy shit. I've tried reigning in my spending habits and only buy stuff I'm really going to actually use or play. The amount of money I've spent on Steam has definitely gone down since I've done this.
I remember doing a survey for them a while back when they were doing research to figure out the price points and value propositions for this new system. I let them know I loved the concept, but really wouldn't be interested at most of the higher price points they were reaching for (IIRC survey price points went up to like $25/mo). I was interested in something like the Basic plan at around an $8 price point, and something closer to the Premium (I think with like 7 titles instead of 9) for around $15. The Lite sub they've created for access to the trove is very meh. If they had included at least 1 game choice a month at that price point, I would probably sign up for that immediately.
But the huge price differential between Classic and the new system, rather than motivating me to re-sub to "lock in," is really just turning me off from Humble completely. The old system was inconsistent enough that it was rarely worth it for me to re-sub, and if this new reveal is correct, it's still mostly an 'off' month for me.
Humble's Monthly has been amazing, and looks like it'll continue to be amazing. I can't recommend getting grandfathered in more than I do.
It is so worth it if you want the option to try new games every month.
I'm sure that's a good selection, but I might just be on permanent pause for a bit unless there's something I just got to have. Maybe I'm just saturated with Gamepass?
This is live now, and the leak was correct with one exception: Void Bastards was replaced with Ancestors Legacy. The Shadow of the Tomb Raider situation is a bit confusing too, but sounds like it's not the Definitive Edition.
Void Bastards is available on Xbox Game Pass for PC though, so it doesn't really change much for me.
Void Bastards was actually the game I was most interested in after @MimicSquid clued me into it. Given that the leak was mostly accurate, however, I suspect it won't be too long before we see it come up. Maybe next month!
Humble was the publisher for it, so I definitely wouldn't be surprised to see it at some point. From looking around a little, some people suspect that they might not have wanted to include it while there are so many cheap and easy ways to get access to Xbox Game Pass for PC right now. Since it's available on there, it won't be a very compelling inclusion for anyone that already has Game Pass.
It's a little confusing since they're switching over from Monthly to Choice, but there was also a full release of their last Humble Monthly today. This is the final blind-buy, so you had to buy in advance to get these games: