Re: HumbleChoice: July 2025

On Wed, 2 Jul 2025 20:05:21 -0600, "rms" <rsquiresMOO@MOOflashMOO.net>
wrote:

Can you explain how the monthly games work?  Namely I noticed it wanted me
to choose any or all of 8 games, but why not just give all the keys at once,
what's the purpose of choosing?  (I opted out and chose to skip this month's
games)

The choosing seems to be a legacy of back when you only got eight
games out of, say 12; you actually had to choose. But that period only
lasted a few months before they decided to just give you all the games
(or only started offering 8 games total). Right now, you pay the full
amount and can 'choose' less than 8 if you want, but you won't get a
discount.

Other than that, it's a 'cancel-any-time' sort of subscription. If you
don't cancel, you'll be automatically charged mid-month for the new
games (unless you manually 'pause' your subscription, because you
don't want that month's games). There's no real benefit to maintaining
your subscription*; I think you get a 10% discount off any other
purchases in the HumbleStore if you keep your subs active, but that's
pretty much it. You get to keep any games you purchased regardless if
you let the subscription lapse.

HumbleChoice is arguably still worth it. I usually find one or two
games a month that I'm interested in, and paying $12 for those one or
two games was always cheaper than buying them on Steam directly. Plus,
it was nice to feed The Number 8 new games a month.

(There was also an added benefit in that I sometimes received
duplicate games which I'd then use in the Holiday Give-aways here.)

But it's value is definitely diminishing. The quality of their games
is going down, there's less side benefits, and since I don't do the
Holiday Give-Away anymore, even the duplicate games I might get are
'wasted'. It doesn't help that there are SO MANY OTHER free games on
offer that even the $12 price isn't quite as competitive anymore.

Five years ago, I would have strongly recommended a HumbleChoice
subscription; it was a great way to get a lot of games on the cheap.
Two years ago, I still would have recommended it, with caveats. Now,
with the price increase? I'm not so sure.






* there used to be more benefits. Long-term subscribers were
grandfathered in to a lower monthly price, and there used to be an
archive of (mostly Indie) games you could access through their client
(unlike the main Choice games, you'd lose access to these 'archive'
games if the subscription lapsed) but these features were dropped over
the years.