Four years ago, some game-industry veterans decided to try selling games in a different way. Today, Humble Bundle is celebrating an impressive milestone.
Humble Bundle, the website that curates collections of games and then lets customers pay whatever they want to own them, has raised more than $50 million for charity since it in 2010. The company, which executives from developer Wolfire Games founded, offers customers the chance to split their funds between developers, charity, and Humble Bundle. In its four-year history, the company has offered a huge number of bundles featuring hundreds of games, and it has helped raise money for 59 charities in the process.
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“Our reputation has grown,” Humble Bundle cofounder John Graham told GamesBeat. “Where before our CEO Jeff [Rosen] would be on calls with the charities, and he would have to explain what the whole thing was about.”
The charities found the whole idea confusing. When people go to pay what they want for one of the collections, Humble Bundle’s site offers a default split that gives 65 percent of the cash to the studios who made the games and then 20 percent to the charity; 15 percent goes to Humble Bundle. But customers can move a set of sliders to give more or less to any of the three.
Graham continued, “but I remember Jeff saying that eventually the charities would boil it down to ‘Let me get this straight, we’re going to do no work, but if we let you put our marks on your site, you’ll pay us money?’ Now, we’re more of this known force, and the conversations have gotten easier.”
The importance of charity
Humble Bundle probably could have gotten away with its idea without involving charity, but the Rosen says the idea from the beginning was to bring in organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Red Cross.
“We wanted to go further than just pay-what-you-want,” Rosen told GamesBeat. “We were thinking about what promotion we wanted to put together, and we wanted to make it as consumer-friendly as possible. And the idea that came to mind was to let people not just pay us what they want, but pay charity.”
The idea was that even if people didn’t necessarily like all of the games they were getting, they would still possibly want to contribute to help out these third-party organizations.
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“Putting that power in the hands of customers led to people trusting us more,” said Rosen. “Ultimately, it made the bundle more successful. I think that’s what makes the bundle so humble.”
On gaming culture and charity
Humble Bundle isn’t the only company or group that has raised money from gamers for charity. Annual events like the Desert Bus for Hope and Awesome Games Done Quick raise funds for cancer research or Doctors Without Borders.
“I think gamers are generous,” said Rosen. “I think the industry is generous. Fundamentally, I wonder if the people who play video games — who have electricity and fast Internet and benefit from all these luxuries — are more willing to harness the energy around these products to get fresh drinking water to the other side of the planet.”
Rosen and Graham went on to give examples of what the $50 million has accomplished.
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“The World Land Trust, who we featured during a Humble Bundle, they were able to calculate for us the cost per acre to save the rain forest,” said Rosen. “And we could see how many acres gamers were saving as funds were coming in. And we hear stories all the time from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, when they’re trying to fight SOPA and other things, the funds we’ve given them help them with their various operations.”
Humble Bundle plans to continue doing what it can to raise money and help out developers. And everyone involved, including the gamers, developers, charities, and Humble Bundle itself, all will continue to benefit.