There is a huge difference between giving away a year-old product and giving away a brand new, never-been-sold-before one.

Let me explain.

Radiohead took a -huge- risk by releasing an album, out the door, right at the start, with a "pay what you want" pricing model.

2dboy is taking -no- risk by releasing World of Goo with a "pay what you want" pricing model. They are already on the tail end of the demand curve at the $20 price point, they are just using this as a chance to capture more of the market at a smaller price.

Radiohead took a huge swing with their pricing model, 2dboy didn't. It's a completely different situation.

I would have paid more for it then the ask. I had it preordered though. Maybe I can gift a copy...

I hope they make it an iPhone game. If they would have released it for the iPhone originally it would probably be the most sold game on the system.

Great game. Even if you aren't much of a gamer, give this game a try. Anyone who ever enjoyed building anything (everyone here?) should enjoy the puzzles and anyone with even the smallest bit of design taste (most of us?) should enjoy crazy well polished presentation.

I got this with the Steam Indie Pack; it was one of my favorite entries. (If you're looking for games beyond this, let me also recommend Blueberry Garden, Braid, and Everyday Shooter.) I can't support the design trend of simple gameplay with elaborate detail enough. Most game design today strikes me as being ass-backward: Attention is focused on insane playtime and complicated systems, and not on the small details. The result had been a lot of games that look ugly and aren't fun to play without dedicating a lot of time to them.

World of Goo and similar indie games are making gaming mainstream. Anybody can play them and enjoy them. Casual players get the fun distraction, and more hardcore players can appreciate the finer details and the more difficult challenges.

I love this game! I got this as part of the MacHeist bundle (I know I know, but the bundle was too exquisite) and it is seriously one of the most fun games out there!

Would totally buy it again, and possibly will now, just to pat them in the back!

Yay. my sorry grad student salary can't justify $20, but i'll throw down $10...

I've been wanting to try it our for a while.

The cost of filling out my cc or paypal info exceeds my personal cost of spending $20 dollars. I would literately pay $20 just to avoid the hassle.

On a related subject matter, recently I spotted something a bit off on my Verizon bill. I get phone/cable/internet from them on one bill, but I noticed an odd charge. I had to dig through the bill to find the one page that mentioned a charge from payment one on behalf the internet commerce company.

In short, it was definitely a fraudulent charge and apparently they can bill you, via Verizon, TimeWarner, At&t, etc. automatically! It has happened to a lot of people, there is nothing you need to do for them to start billing you.

In fact, you HAVE to preemptively call your ISP to tell them to lock your account so that 3rd parties can't aoutmagically bill you!

However, why can't we have legitimate charges which are this easily billed? Why can't I sign up once for an advertising project or something, and then it divides X amount of dollars every month to websites I visit?

Or something like that. Ideas?

Quick question -- if I donate a few £ to the guy, can I link it with my Steam account?

I'm kinda losing patience for games I can't manage through steam. Am guessing that Steam won't take licence keys for copies not bought through their services though, which I think is a missed opportunity to get more people using Steam.

I don't understand this. As a consumer buying a video game, I'm trying to maximize my entertainment per dollar. Why would I ever pay more than the minimum amount? Maybe the HN crowd will pay a little more out of a sense of camaraderie, but I don't understand why a typical gamer would.

My son has been wanting to buy W.O.G. for a long time and brought it up today. I hadn't looked at HN yet, so we went direct to 2dboy.com and to our delight, found the sale. We ended up buying to copies for a total of $16. Way to go guys, I hope you make a bundle.

Thanks for posting this. Glad to pick this up and support the designers and the model.

I remember they had lot of press (or at least Linux press) releasing their Linux version. I think they are quite good in marketing or being very lucky (Now you HN people know what luck means :) ).

Seems like a bad idea to me. Sure, somepeople will pay more than $1 (or whatever the paypal minimum). But most will pay the minimum.

I haven't been able to download a copy of the game from their servers in an hour, guess the sale is working :)

If I hadn't already bought it twice (once on PC, once on the Wii) I'd certainly buy it now. Great game.

I was curious whether 1 cent would work.

It did.

Has anyone been able to download the game?