Most of these gaming sites are owned by larger and richer parent companies. In case of IGN, its seems to be J2 Global. They probably used IGN to buy Humble since its the only subsidiary they have that's game-related. Also, many gaming sites have premium monthly subscriptions (PC Gamer is a good example) so they aren't reliant fully on ads.

Humble Bundle was dead to me once they started selling keys for DRM service without including any DRM-free version. At that point, I stopped giving them money, and while I might have purchased at least one thing since them, if I did, I set the Humble Tip to 0.

If they hadn't done that, I would have appreciated developments like the Humble Store now, and might have considered the Humble Monthly, but I cannot, in good conscience, support a game distributor that supports DRM.

I rate this 9/11.Would humbly again ;).

Well, this should be fun. =/

Sooo, any bets how long it'll take for IGN/J2 Global to screw up whole Humble Bundle?

"In other words, Humble Bundle will now be called Bundle."

It's better than being bought-up by Valve/EA/'other publisher' or a company that has no knowledge of the gaming world. If they are going to be bought up by somebody let it be by someone who at least knows something about computer/video games, and is not a publisher.

Also, Humble has 10 million customers, what person will say: 'let's change everything and risk loosing 10 million customers [a very large number for an online gaming business]'.

This change doesn't really affect me though, to me Humble is just another Steam-store, who sells a few DRM-free games (which can either be bought on GOG or directly through the developer). However, it was unexpected, I did not see this coming.

The companies you said do have a better knowledge of the gaming world. Because they are in the business of selling games. Now it could be argued that IGN is also experienced in selling games, but even then, don't forget that IGN, at least legally, is a news / journalism outlet. The conflict of interest potential is huge. What if they use IGN to promote the games the store is selling? Or reverse that and promote games on HB that IGN covered? How long before all humble bundle / store games start to get higher ratings? Or IGN stops reviewing non HB/store games?

Let's wait and see... these days I'm mostly getting mobile bundles but I don't think I'll miss them a lot if things get changed horribly.

Steam/EA/'other publisher' buys Humble => cannibalizing Humble. Valve would not allow Humble to exist, EA/'other publisher' would push other publishers to leave Humble. Either way, no Humble in the future.

Project Red uses GOG to promote the games they are making: Witcher ? Gwent? nobody questions that.
Humble is also a game publisher, nobody questioned the confilict of interest when that happened.
Valve is also a publisher. When Half-life 3 comes out nobody will question their confilict of interest.

IGN, GameSpot, EuroGamer, RockPaperShotgun, Polygon, PC Gamer ... they all promote Humble already: 'get this on Humble Monthly', 'get this Humble package' and so on.

IGN competes with GameSpot, and what GameSpot covers so must IGN, and vice versa. They all copy each other.
IGN cannot afford to ignore covering games that its competitors are covering.

If anything the conflict of interest is greater with IGN's competitors, GameSpot/GiantBomb, Polygon etc. Will they stop covering Humble bundles and monthly games?

meh - don't really think that will be good for the future of humble T_T

I have no strong opinions on this matter. I mostly buy DRM-free Android bundles from HB nowadays, out of habit mostly (because it seems I rarely play games on Android devices nowadays, but just in case that changes one day when I am stranded on a desert island with only my mobile phone and a sun-powered aggregrator (to recharge my phone)).

I don't go to this doom and gloom predictions just because the owner changes, until something really happens. Yeah, EA executives visiting CDPR offices in order to migrate GOG.com with EA Origin, yeah right as if blaa blaa blaa..

I think I have everything downloaded that I care about, but I suppose I need to go through it because it's surely out of date. Wish there was a tool like lgogdownloader/gogrepo.py for humble. But one would have to be rather optimistic to build one now.

Imaginary ramblings of a newly instated boss:

Need to cut those expenses. Why is this post for servers so large? Cut it down to under a third as soon as doable. Need to get this place profitable. A profit of under 20% a year is unacceptable. What else can we cut? Move office, except mine of course, to some 'slave' labour country.

DISCLAIMER: The above is pure speculative fiction.

optimistic