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Humble's Golden Handcuffs

I am a "classic" subscriber to Humble Choice. This means I get to choose ten from a selection of about a dozen Humble Choice games for a monthly fee of $11.99.  This is a pretty good deal considering the standard subscription rate is $14.99 for three games and $19.99 for nine games. The only trouble is that I have to stay subscribed or I lose this classic plan forever. It feels like I am trapped with a set of golden handcuffs. 

I am on the classic plan because I was previously a subscriber to Humble Monthly the precursor to Humble Choice. In Humble monthly there was a smaller number of games every month but you had no choice you just got to keep the random six or seven games they gave out every month. Even though I rarely played more than one or two of the games every month (and often went months without playing any of them) I loved Humble Monthly. The list of new games came out on the first Friday of every month and it was always special learning which new games I had gotten. 

Even though I get more games with Humble Choice I find it less satisfying and more stressful. I now have to go through the list of games every month and choose which ones to keep and which ones to discard. I know I will only only ever play one or two games from each selection so this is always a frustrating and somewhat pointless exercise. 

It is a  popular theme on the humble subreddit that the quality of the bundles has gone down over the years. I am not sure about this but I don't really care. I never really expected to get AAA games on Humble Bundle or Humble choice. For me the big thing is being given a selection of lesser known games that I might otherwise have overlooked. 

So I am a not entirely happy subscriber to Humble Choice and yet I feel trapped by these golden handcuffs. To be honest a subscription with three choices would probably suit my temperament better but since that costs more than I currently pay that would be silly. I believe there is an option to pause your subscription for a month without losing classic status so I might look into that but that just makes the "choice" even harder and I don't want to have to choose.

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Comments

Azuriel said…
I have Paused my Humble subscription for like the fourth month in a row. Apparently you can keep Pausing pretty much indefinitely (each month) if the games don't seem worth it, and that is my situation.

Humble Choice seems especially egregious lately when I compare it with the Xbox Game Pass, which provides a rotating set of high-profile games for like $5/month. You don't own anything, but I never play any Humble games more than once anyway, so there's not much downside.
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