A brief discussion of Groupees and Greenlight bundles

ok wait what is going on here

I'm a pretty big fan of https://groupees.com/ which I believe was originally a website that allowed indie musicians to get their work 'out there' that gradually morphed into a bundle selling site. There is also of course indie gala and a couple others, and then everyone loves humble bundle. Groupes and Indiegala are more the reasonable fringe, or um, a reasonable facsimile ... most of the time...

One thing Groupees seems to have success doing is, under their own terms, is running "Greenlight" bundles, or bundles of indie games which 'promise' they will give you Steam keys to their indie games once the game is greenlit and so forth. Generally speak, I do believe other sites have tried running this sort of thing, but Groupees seems to have the most success with it. (I should put success in quotes, I think) They're currently running their 14th Greenlight bundle, which is over here, if you care. I have absolutely no idea how good any of the game in this bundle are. None whatsoever. So of course, I bought them all.

look at all these sweet sweet nickels and dimes

For a lot of people, a steam key is worth infinitely more than a desura key or DRM free link. Especially if sweet, glorious cards are up for grabs. But this creates an interesting conundrum, how often do you  actually get a key for a game? There are two hoops to jump through here: First, the game actually needs to get greenlit. Second, the key has to somehow make its way back to you. So, as a little discussion, I'm going to look over the Greenlight bundles I've bought and look up how many keys I've gotten vs how many of these games have been greenlit without sending out keys. Note that these bundles are often build your owns, or might always be, ie I selected these games for purchase rather than the bundle's contents being static. So maybe I didn't choose so wisely. Maybe I should have just voted anime.

Oh, and I'll list how much I paid too, just for the fun of realizing how much money I've wasted on this shit when I could have put the same amount of money into just buying Skyrim or something. As a note, I've read sometimes people will give out their keys by going through Desura instead of sending them to groupees. I consider this as fundamentally disingenuous and I'm not checking Desura for Steam keys


Build a Greenlight Bundle #2 (Yeah, I started on two) Bought for $5 geez on April 27th 2013

Games in bundle: 11
Steam keys: 7
Games greenlit without giving out keys: Draconian wars (ok this was on Desura, FINE I GUESS. YOU BROKE ME AT ONCE)

Build a Greenlight Bundle #5 Bought for $1.25 on February 25th 2014

Games in bundle: 7
Steam keys: 4
Games greenlit without giving outs key: Battlepaths (which notes on Desura it is available on steam, but doesn't seem to have a key for me - though this might be a result of Desura being, uh, see note), Spice Road

wait, wait. Spice Road DOES give out a steam key - once you read their forums,  see the developer comment that links to their webpage, obtain your CD key (not your desura key, oh no) and then input it into their webpage you can have a steam key oh good lord WHAT IS THIS HORSEY DANCE SHOW

it is here, in case (or not here?) you're wondering where to go on desura

You know, to interrupt, I was wondering why I didn't check Desura for my keys - oh yeah, it is out of the way, the client is laggy and ugly, and it freezes when I try to draw my keys. I understand Desura supposedly did a lot for the indie scene but geez this is like Visit to the Dentist: Drill for my Steam keys, the game. So I don't know if I'm blaming the indie devs for this, although seriously dude, send your keys to the point of sale.

The forums do imply Battlepaths has a key ... Somewhere. But Desura is so laggy and weird I'm already tired of looking

Build a Greenlight Bundle #6 Bought for $1.25 on May 28th
Games in bundle: 8
Steam keys: 1
Games greenlit without giving out keys: 0

I guess this bundle just sucked

Build a Greenlight Bundle #7 Bought for $1.25 June 18th, 2014
Games in bundle: 7
Steam keys: 0
Games greenlit without giving out keys: 0

Build a Greenlight Bundle # 9 Bought for $1 on August 28th 2014
Games in bundle: 5
Steam keys: 1
Games greenlit without giving out keys: 0

Geez this is grim. I just wanted me some Dwarf Tower! I assume that is like Dwarf Fortress. Only simpler, since its just a tower.

Build a Greenlight Bundle #10 Bought for $1.50 on September 10th 2014
Games in bundle: 11
Steam keys: 2
Games greenlit without giving out keys: 0

Building a Greenlight Bundle #11 Bought for $1.25 on October 9th 2014
Games in bundle: 10
Steam keys: 1
Games greenlit without giving out keys: 0

Does contain, on the one activated steam key, the following blurb
"We feel like gamers deserve some real challenge after playing games that hold your hand and show you every little secret for years and years, auto save every 5 minutes and try to appeal to masses by being noob friendly."

Meanwhile the game is an actual challenge to look at. Feel free to look up Why So Evil on the steam store, I'm not exposing that to anyone who doesn't explicitly ask. Because ugh. Real challenge. Ugh.

Build a Greenlight Bundle #12 Bought for $1.86 on November 7th 2014
Games in bundle: 6
Steam keys: 0
Games greenlit without giving out keys: 0

Kinda weird - this contains a game with has the following on its greenlight page. Except, you know, this bundle went up more than a week after this game was greenlit? No keys, at the moment, though I'm not sure it has enough orc princesses that I'm considering that much of a loss. It doesn't appear to be actually up on steam an entire month later.

Note this bundle also contains Super Cyborg which looks like the loveliest contra clone ever. And also claims to be greenlit, but isn't up for sale on Steam. Process might be harder than I thought.

Building a Greenlight Bundle #13 Bought for $1.43 on November 18th, 2014
Games in bundle: 5
Steam keys: 0
Games greenlit without giving out keys: 0

So, in summary:

Basically, I've spent about $16 on greenlight bundles, which probably would have bought me skyrim:LE by now. I've received 16 or so steam keys, though there are a couple games on the list that have been authorized to be sold on the store but not reached the point where they are. This might actually be true of a lot of games, I looked up a couple and found many games had been green lit but were just sitting there 'waiting to do paperwork' or something.

I've mentioned before that I think Greenlight is rumored by Valve to be going the way of the dodo, which is an apt analogy, since apparently the dodo was fat, stupid and tasted terrible. Whether or not it in fact is, it appears to be a floodgate from the nation of anime with chunks of weeaboo floating in it, and I'm losing the point ... Regardless, the conclusion is generally pretty clear. If you're looking for steam keys, its not too bad a deal to do the pre-orders on Groupees if you're willing to wager that dollar or so. But if not, I gotta say there's more steam keys to be had buying bundles that start with Steam keys.

I've been feeding the squirrels around my house with peanuts recently, and the squirrels run when I go outside to feed them, but they do seem to have figured out that peanuts come out of the house. They're not really certain how the process works, but they stare into the windows, watching me. Why this makes me feel like Greenlight, I don't know, but somehow I think indie developers are the squirrels.

Eventually Greenlight is going away, but for now, it generally looks like throwing peanuts at the groupees bundles isn't as good as just buying their normal bundles. Or as good as paying to buy a bag of peanuts to throw at actual squirrels, assuming you like squirrels.

And if you don't like squirrels, you're a bad person.