Private | |
Industry | Video game industry |
Founded | 2010 |
Headquarters | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
Area served
|
Worldwide |
Number of employees
|
60 (2017) |
Website | humblebundle |
Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and the rest split between the game developers. Humble Bundle continues to offer these limited-time bundles, but have expanded to include a persistent storefront. The Humble Bundle concept was initially run by Wolfire Games in 2010, but by its second bundle, the Humble Bundle company was spun out to manage the promotion, payments, and distribution of the bundles.
Initial bundles were typically collections of independently developed games featuring multi-platform support (including Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms) provided without digital rights management (DRM). Occurring every few months, the two-week Humble Bundles drew media attention, with several bundles surpassing $1 million in sales. Subsequently, the bundles became more frequent and expanded to include games from established developers, AAA publishers, games for Android-based devices, bundles promoting game jams, and bundles featuring digital copies of music, books and comic books. Bundles are presently offered on a more regular basis, with a persistent storefront for individual game sales.
The Humble Bundle offerings support a number of charities, including Child's Play, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, charity: water, the American Red Cross, WaterAid and the . By September 2017, the total charitable amount raised by the Bundles exceeded $100 million across 50 different charities. By the end of October 2014, participating developers have grossed more than $100 million. The success of the Humble Bundle approach has inspired a number of similar efforts to offer "pay what you want" bundles for smaller titles, including Indie Gala and Indie Royale.