Observations of a Humble Bundle sale

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I like to discuss the observations made by a game development studio after the selling period of a Humble Bundle package was finished.

During this week, I received the link to this blogpost during a Skype conversation. The post is from a game development studio and is describing the outcome of a two week Humble Bundle[1] selling period of one of their games: Monaco.

The most interesting observation comes from the fact that the amount of sold copies of the game hasn’t changed on Steam[2]–one of the game’s main distribution platforms–during the period of the Humble Bundle. This surprising result leads to several possible assumptions.

First of all, participating in a Humble Bundle does increase the revenue during the selling period of the Humble Bundle. The general sale of the game seems to be unaffected by the great offer and thus all the sold Humble Bundle copies are a huge plus to the general revenue of the game studio.

Additionally, the awareness about the Humble Bundle packages seems to be not as widespread as the Steam Shop. The blogpost already guesses that every consumer tends to stick to the favorite game store. However, the price of the Humble Bundle was completely up to the consumer whereas the Steam price is fixed. In this case, the consumer would have saved a lot of money by buying the Humble Bundle. This finally leads to the aforementioned assumption that all the buyers on Steam weren’t aware of the Humble Bundle sale.

Unfortunately, the sales of the Humble Bundle don’t reveal the reason why the consumer has bought the package. A Humble Bundle package includes several games and thus it’s not completely obvious which of the games has caught the interest of the buyer. However, Monaco was only included in the package, if the consumer has paid more than the avarage buyer. In this case, the consumer seems to have wanted to buy this particular game.
On the other side, Monaco wasn’t the only „pay more than the average game“, so it’s still impossible to find out, if the consumer really wanted to buy Monaco. This could also explain the fact that the amount of sold copies on Steam was unaffected by the Humble Bundle: Steam buyers really wanted to have this game, whereas the Humble Bundle consumers might have noticed the game only through this special offer. Moreover, it could be possible that these consumers weren’t sure if they really like the game and that the special Humble Bundle offer just convinced them to give it a try.

Under the bottom line, getting the own game into a Humble Bundle package can increase the revenue over the selling period. The Humble Bundle sale can offer the game to a completely different consumer base, who haven’t heard about the game before or weren’t sure if they like the game.