Humble Bundle ex-pats launch 'Digiphile'

A new player has entered the game store chat.

Former Humble Bundle veterans launched Digiphile, a curated digital storefront for games and books emphasizing charity and community.

They claim to be set to deliver, “the next big thing in community-focused discovery.” I think that was the goal of Humble Bundle to start with, but maybe they lost their way. (Speculation, so who knows.)

The new team includes Alex Hill, Andy Franzen, Marcus Hess, Mat Dwyer, and Kasey Brounkowski. All former Humble Bundle folks.

Alex Hill, as quoted in an article over on GameDeveloper.com, said, “Everything starts with curation. Each Digiphile collection is a limited-time event, made in collaboration with respected voices in each genre to create meaningful showcases that celebrate what’s worth playing right now.”

“Digiphile doesn’t have a persistent storefront, so each collection is, by design, a limited-time event, maximizing attention and impact while preserving the value of each title.”

Publishers get a 75% revenue share with 5% going to charity, and full earnings on DLC. That’s a bit better for publishers than the common 70/30 split offered by Steam and others. While this service, and Humble for that matter, are not directly comparable to Steam or Epic, they are potential players in the vast PC gaming ecosystem we’re in the thick of currently.

Hill says, “Digiphile doesn’t have a persistent storefront, so each collection is, by design, a limited-time event, maximizing attention and impact while preserving the value of each title.”

An interesting bit includes “The Digiphile Exchange,” which lets users trade duplicate keys for credit to cut waste. (Not sure what is being wasted, but that’s how they put it.)

They aim to stay independent, promote discovery through people over algorithms, and avoid constant storefront clutter. We could certainly use less storefront clutter. (Although in Steam’s case, it’s probably a good problem to have given their breadth and dominance.)

I say the more the merrier, and if they can take some of those early Humble Bundle concepts and refine the formula, I can’t see how that would be a bad thing for players.

As always, look forward to your replies and comments!

Oh, and if you get five minutes to spare, watch me fumble around with 16-bit game titles I know nothing about. :) - Scott