They say with 5 stars you can buy games from a secret GOG catalogue...

It is for the time the only way to get System Shock 3.

And GOG.com will be remembered forever as a company that destroyed prominent indie developer by lawsuits.

Good PR move!

Apparently Amanita is going to give Machinarium and an artbook to everyone who pre-ordered the game at GOG or GG. Good think I decided to wait, these bonuses are worthless to me.

Meanwhile that "prominent idie developer" will be remembered as the indie developer who pulled a fast one on a business partner. That's how I remember them. I didn't know that being indie allowed one to disregard anything labelled "professional conduct in a business setting".

It won't be. It will be remembered as a dev who made Machinarium and Botanicula, and noby will remember anything about screwing one single deal on GOG.com , except for wikipedia.

Trust me.

This is a thing that happened overnight. Lawsuits can last for years.

"Pożyjemy, zobaczymy" in that case :D

Only time will tell (for the English speakers :P)

Nah, I think everything will be fine. GOG.com and Botanicula devs will give machinarium and botanicula digital artbook to all peps who bought botanicula as a preorder , maybe something more from gog itself (20% discount on any game or whatever), and everybody will go their way.

GOG.com will be much more careful with making agreements with new indie devs in the future, though.

While that is nice and all, it's the principle of the thing. GOG shouldn't be forced by someone else's mistake or intentional deceit to lose money in order to save face. That's what bothers me.

I do hope they type in size 17 font in bold "NO HUMBLE BUNDLE ANYTHING FOR X AMOUNT OF TIME!" so they can avoid this kind of BS.

They are not forced to do anything. GOG.com wants to make things right because they are awesome.

So I pre-ordered Botanicula.

Today I see the humble bundle.

'Ok, it kind of sucks that I already bought it on GOG, but I'll buy the bundle anyways because Machinarium is awesome.'

I buy the bundle, I come here and now I see I'll be getting Machinarium for free tomorrow...

Good thing money isn't really an issue to me, but I can see how people with less money feel a bit f'ed up the a.

+1 respect!

Actually there is a good chance of a bad faith claim even if they just verbally said it was going to be the best offer for the game outside their own site (HIB not being their own site) which theres several hints they did say even in their own announcement of it coming to GOG

I do wonder to what extent Amanita has shot themselves in the foot. I'm not even really talking about this really awkward release blunder - they're not business professionals? You don't say! - but overall sales-wise. Sure, they're bound to make a bit of money from the Humble Bundle right now, but after that's done with I really doubt they'll sell very many copies of Botanicula since everyone who really wanted it will already have it.

Anyone with half a brain should have realized that the timing of the bundle was just about the dumbest thing to do. I mean, seriously? It didn't even cross one of their people's minds? You don't even have to be all that great at economics to figure that out. I suspect if they had waited say a few months before dropping this bomb then at least they could have had some decent sales from normal transactions and still done well with the bundle itself. *shakes head in puzzlement*

I wouldn't be surprised if this whole preorder/bundle/customer rage thing will be forgotten by most people in the long run, especially by the ones who didn't preorder, but undermining yourself and especially undermining your business partners: not good!


As I've said earlier, I think I'll still partake in the HB for the film and to give Windosill a whirl (the demo I played a while back certainly was charming in its quirkiness), but I already paid for Botanicula via preorder here (and I own Machinarium three times over already - well, four times depending on what happens tomorrow =P) so Amanita will definitely not see a dime for that.

What I find hard to believe is that it didn't cross the mind of Amanita's team that this could cause a stir.

They could have made a deal with GOG that would have made both parties look awesome for rewarding both loyal fans and potentially interested customers, for example if they had let GOG announce on release day that they will now add Kooky and Windosill, the soundtrack and the art-book (and for an even greater effect also Machinarium) to the account of everyone who pre-ordered.

Instead they didn't inform GOG about the bundle promo and kept all these extras to themselves until GOG complained, and even then they're giving away only half of the stuff that you'd get from HIB for the same price of the pre-order ... :/