Update (06/17/21, 4:02 PM ET) – Humble Games brand manager Connor Bridgeman has stated that they are investigating the situation surrounding Humble Bundle game tweets apparently being DMCAed.
"We’re looking into this." read the tweet from Bridgeman. "We have no copyright blockers up on our end and very much encourage sharing our content. Really no clue why this is happening[.]"
We'll continue to follow this story as it develops. Our original story continues below.
Humble Bundle is apparently DMCAing tweets featuring games it publishes, most recently with a tweet from gaming new curator Ryan Brown that featured rose-engine's upcoming survival horror game Signalis.
Humble Bundle is a digital retailer that primarily sells games for PC, Mac, and Linux with a few console games included in the mix. A key feature of the site is the ability to donate some of your purchase price to a charity of your choice. Most recently, it upset customers when it announced that it was changing its price sliders on bundles, a decision that was ultimately reversed after backlash from customers.
Now, a new problem featuring this discount retailer has emerged: Humble Bundle appears to be DMCAing tweets featuring images of its games, and it looks like this problem has happened to more than one person.
Why is Humble Bundle DMCAing Tweets Featuring Its Games?
Earlier today, a tweet from gaming news curator Ryan "Toadsanime" Brown had to be deleted due to an apparent takedown. The tweet featured an image of Signalis, an upcoming survival horror game that is being published by Humble Bundle through its Humble Games publishing arm.
Following this incident, we discovered that this has happened to more people aside from Ryan Brown in the past. We reached out to people within the gaming industry and discovered at least one other person had faced a similar issue with their tweets being DMCAed by Humble Bundle. All involved parties affected by this issue asked to remain anonymous for fear of impacting their business or losing access to Humble Bundle's partner program. (Disclosure: TechRaptor partners with Humble Bundle for its affiliate linking program.)
Our sources believe that this is an automated system and that these tweets weren't manually removed. Why such an automated system is set up would be a bit of a mystery — one would think that a game publisher would want images and media about one of its upcoming games being shared far and wide.
If one of your tweets was taken down or DMCA'd due to it featuring a Humble Bundle game such as Signalis, please email us at tips@techraptor.net. We'll keep your identity anonymous upon your request.
For now, we've reached out to Humble Bundle for answers to these questions and we'll update this article when we receive a reply. As for the game that serves as the center of this incident, it looks pretty neat — you can add Signalis to your wishlist on Steam.
Why do you think Humble Bundle would be automatically removing tweets featuring its games? What do you think of Signalis? Let us know in the comments below!
