It was impressive when Robert Bowling, creative strategist for Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward, paid $500 for a batch of indie games that only cost $85. Then Notch, maker of Minecraft stepped up, with $2000.

These guys and a few others are paying lots of money for the Humble Indie Bundle 2, which went on sale yesterday. The bundle is the second offering of indie games being offered to gamers for any price they want to pay. People can name their price and direct their payment in different proportions to the games' developers and various charities.

The games in the second bundle are: Braid, Machinarium, Osmos, Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans (pictured up top).

Bowling and Notch paid a whole lot more than the ordinary gamer, who are spending a little over $7 on average for the bundle, as of the writing of this post.

Humble Indie Bundle sales stats [Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]

Want the flexibility of running Linux on your PC but still want to play games? This guide to just what you can actually play on the alternative operating system should help!

Penguspy is a great resource for serious Linux gamers, who once they're done with the more high-profile penguin-friendly games like The Sims 3 can use the service to find other titles that may not wear their Linux compatibility so prominently on their sleeves.

It's not a store or anything. Rather, it's just a place where Linux games can be listed, detailed then rated by the community.

Machinarium, Defcon, X3, Minecraft, Neverwinter Nights, Amnesia...all great games. And as PenguSpy reveals, all totally compatible with the Linux operating system.

Those running Linux and interested in seeing just what else you can run, Penguspy's catalogue listing is below.

Penguspy [via Lifehacker]

Machinarium - an adventure game we like very much - is headed to the Wii, via its WiiWare service. Release date TBA. Yay!

The people who made the beautiful adventure game Machinarium estimate that only about 5-15% of the people who played their game actually paid for it. They don't seem too pissed. In fact, they're offering those thieves a sweet deal.

Amanita Design is now selling Machinarium for the paltry sum of $5 USD to anyone and everyone who'd like to pay for things that people spend time and money developing. That includes the game's soundtrack and a chance to right one's wrongs. A bargain compared to the original price of $20 USD that most people opted not to pay. (The deal is actually available to anyone. No pre-stealing required!)

The Machinarium folks are also throwing in a song, "Pirate Amnesty," to commemorate the occasion, free of charge. You can grab Machinarium on the cheap for Windows PCs, Mac or Linux right now if you want.

Machinarium Pirate Amnesty [Official Site via Ars Technica]

Never ones to let a bit of charity corner the market for gaming bargains, Valve's Steam service is now offering the "Steam Play Indie Pack", which bundles five great games along with ability to play on both Mac and PC.

That means you can buy the games on PC and play them on Mac, or vice versa. Which is probably the main reason it's gone on sale today of all days, but you can't help but wonder whether the success of the Wolfire bundle didn't contribute slightly to the decision.

The five games are "And Yet It Moves", "Galcon Fusion", "Osmos", "World of Goo" and "Machinarium", so yeah, it's a quality pack. Indeed, for $20 it'd be worth it for those last two games alone.

The studio responsible for last year's indie adventure/puzzle hit Machinarium says that Microsoft refused the game for Xbox Live Arcade after six months of negotiations. "They don't want to support games which aren't Microsoft exclusives," the studio chief alleges.

"Microsoft just refused Machinarium for XBLA after a half year of talking with them," Jakub Dvorsky told the site XBLAFans.com. "They like the game and know it would be very successful on their platform, but they don't want to support games which aren't Microsoft exclusives. Machinarium isn't, since we've also released versions for Mac and Linux. We have another option to approach some big publisher to bring the game to XBLA, which is quite absurd to do and lose maybe a large part of revenue because of that."

Machinarium was one of 2009's most acclaimed indie games, taking home honors for Best Visual Arts at the Independent Game Festival. Luke also loved it so much he sneaked it onto his honeymoon (check out his review of it.) If what Dvorsky's alleging is true, it sounds rather shortsighted on Microsoft's part to turn it down simply because its PC version is also on something other than Windows.

I have emailed both Dvorsky and a Microsoft rep for comment or clarification. Anything that's said will be updated here.

Machinarium Refused for XBLA [xblafans.com via GameStooge]

The studio responsible for last year's indie adventure/puzzle hit Machinarium says six months of talks with Microsoft ended with no progress on bringing the Indie game to the Xbox 360, because Microsoft doesn't want to support games that aren't Microsoft exclusives.

Update: The original source of this report now says: "When asked about their plans to port Machinarium to different platforms [Amanita Design head Jakub] Dvorsky confirmed having ‘talked' with Microsoft. He did not specify if this involved being accepted for XBLA or being published by Microsoft on XBLA, but did put an emphasis on losing revenue through a conventional publishing deal."

Kotaku's original post follows:

"Microsoft just refused Machinarium for XBLA after a half year of talking with them," Jakub Dvorsky told the site XBLAFans.com. "They like the game and know it would be very successful on their platform, but they don't want to support games which aren't Microsoft exclusives. Machinarium isn't, since we've also released versions for Mac and Linux. We have another option to approach some big publisher to bring the game to XBLA, which is quite absurd to do and lose maybe a large part of revenue because of that."

Machinarium was one of 2009's most acclaimed indie games, taking home honors for Best Visual Arts at the Independent Game Festival. Luke also loved it so much he sneaked it onto his honeymoon (check out his review of it.) If what Dvorsky's alleging is true, it sounds rather shortsighted on Microsoft's part to turn it down simply because its PC version is also on something other than Windows.

I have emailed both Dvorsky and a Microsoft rep for comment or clarification. Anything that's said will be updated here.

Machinarium Refused for XBLA [xblafans.com via GameStooge]