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Hello, I buy bundles. I used to buy a lot more. At least 80% of my Steam library is from bundles. And like any purchasing habit, it has pros and cons! Observe.
Pros
Cheap. Even more expensive bundles with fewer games (see Humble Monthly) are spectacular deals, one might even say intensely unfair, uncool deals (see Cons). When I was young and just starting out in the game scene, an amazing deal was a sale for five dollars. Now, games in even a high end bundle will run you a couple dollars each. More like a quarter is not uncommon.
Varied. If you love trying new things or being surprised or finding diamonds in the rough, bundles can be exciting. If you like going to your library and going "whoa, what is Hatch and Slay?", bundles might be for you. Different bundle sites offer different experiences here. Humble Bundle can offer some relatively obscure titles, but is also likely to offer entire bundles from your big companies like Square Enix or mid-sized publishers like Focus. Their indie offerings tend to be pretty polished.
If you want to be a bit more adventurous, Indiegala and Bundle Stars offer more bundles, cheaper, with Bundle Stars maybe weighting more toward known or well-reviewed entities, but it's not a hard and fast rule. In both cases, you will at least occasionally have heard of headliners if you're a broad enthusiast, and most games will have Steam reviews. Big studio games are usually not present.
Groupees used to be about on par with Indiegala and Bundle Stars today, but its offerings now tend to be, er, really adventurous. Imagine a casual game bundle. Humble Bundle might provide Pop Cap titles, Indiegala and Bundle Stars might offer hidden object games from respectable small studios, and Groupees' headliner might be Puppy Dog: Jigsaw Puzzles. Now, Puppy Dog: Jigsaw Puzzles is exactly what it says on the tin and Steam reviews say it is an entirely competent creature of its type, but in general: you are much less likely to have heard of the titles and they're less likely to be on Steam if that matters to you.
Cons
The meat of the post below: on having too many games and the need to actually support creators.
Too many games. If you buy bundles regularly, yes, the cost will add up in nickels and dimes, but pertinently, you will not have time to play these games. Period. I don't mind playing a game for a half hour and discarding it forever, but I enjoy writing about these half hour experiences and novelty is a big draw for me. I do get something out of having a persistent backlog (and I still wonder if that something is enough!). That doesn't mean if you like to focus on a few games you really enjoy that a bundle is never worth it - stuff to your tastes may show up once in a while. But buy these frequently and your backlog will quickly become unfinishable.
Not a great way to support creators. This is a big one. And I know that budgets are often small and having enough money for food, shelter, and supporting your favorite entertainers is not always feasible. I'm no businessperson, but as I understand, bundles and deep sales (and bundles are the deepest of sales) are meant to come near the end of a product's life, when the creator is a. trying to eke out a few more bucks and b. trying to get exposure for a new product (one still at full price).
Bundles don't always come near the end of a game's life, though. If you're talking about a big company with a huge backlog, well. It's easier for EA or Square Enix to toss out some of their old or poor-performing titles for pennies on the dollar, get some cash, maybe reach some non-fans, and produce a 59.99 title or few later that year with some expectation it will be purchased for 59.99 (which isn't to say that EA and Square Enix don't have very rough years, SWTOR or original FFXIV, anyone?). Even modest hidden object companies that occasionally populate Indiegala and Bundle Stars aren't putting their best and newest games forward. They're pulling from a backlog, hoping that if you like these games, you'll look to them for your hidden object needs in the future.
But a lot of bundle titles are new or nearly new. Some of these, like Battleborn, might be from large companies that had the misfortune to release near bigger and similar titles like, say, Overwatch. But many are first games from tiny companies or lone creators, hoping for (drumroll) exposure, sometimes mere weeks after game release. Exposure is fiendishly hard, and perhaps patience would do some creators no favors in a crowded marketplace where getting a polished 100 hour experience for five bucks or two bucks is a typical consumer experience. That 25 cents from a disinterested buyer who may or may not ever remember or play the game may seem like the best a producer's going to get.
This is turning into a screed here, but this is one reason I'm trying to be better about buying at full or decent sale price again rather than bundles. Here's the thing. I was never going to pay real money for something like Pahelika or Siege of Inaolia or any of so, so many miscellaneous titles. I was either going to get them bundled or not at all. But there are plenty of games I get from bundles I would have otherwise purchased, like Read Only Memories or Fran Bow or Soma or insert attractive RPG or adventure game here. It's hard to resist an amazing deal, of course, and the current games sales system rewards the patient. I don't feel too bad if it's, like, EA or whatever, and, yes, there are always going to be more games of modest interest than the funds to buy them. But if a game (especially by a small team) releases and you're excited about it and you can afford it, frugality isn't always a virtue. I'm glad I did buy Age of Decadence and Serpent in the Staglands for full price or close to full price.
