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Humble Bundle 3 adds Atom Zombie Smasher
The Humble Indie Bundle 3 has earned over $1.5 million and is still making room for more DRM-free games. Steel Storm is now joined in that little bonus block on the bottom left by PAX 10 winner Atom Zombie Smasher, the top-down apocalypse evacuation sim (type thing) by Blendo Games. Just like the other participants in this popular pay-what-you-want offer, it's compatible with PC, Mac and Linux. If you've already purchased the bundle, Atom Zombie Smasher should be waiting for you on the download page. Also, if you spend more than the average price ($5.42 at time of writing), you'll receive The Humble Indie Bundle 2. Counting the likes of Braid and Machinarium, the "bonus" games now outnumber the five founding members. Not exactly bad news, is it?
Humble Bundle 3: now with Humble Bundle 2
If your canned response to being offered a new computer game is "Meh, I'll wait for the Steam sale," you're going to love this. Humble Indie Bundle 3, which already allows you to act with severe frugality, now throws in Humble Indie Bundle 2 when you pay more than the average price ($4.97 at time of publishing), or if you already bought it before 10:30AM PST this morning. It seems the new metric for measuring interest is "Meh, I'll wait until there's another bundle in it." This latest mutation contains, in addition to six cool indie games (like Crayon Physics Deluxe, And Yet it Moves and VVVVVV), the full Bundle 2 set: Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos and Revenge of the Titans. Well, maybe it's not quite the full Humble Indie Bundle 2 as it was. It was later expanded to include ... Humble Indie Bundle 1. Think of that as a warning: At some point, your penny pinching and love for recursion will intersect inside one of these bundles. [Thanks, Grant.]
The Humble Indie Bundle: Leaving no customer behind
The charitable, almost casually presented collection of indie games, The Humble Indie Bundle, was born from an earnest approach to customer service. Wolfire Games offered a user-determined price point, ditched DRM, shared earnings with charity organizations and targeted multiple platforms -- including Windows, Mac OS and Linux -- when it launched the first Humble Indie Bundle in May 2010. "It was very relaxed and very good for the customer," said Jeffrey Rosen, co-founder of Wolfire Games and Humble Bundle Inc. "We didn't want to leave anybody out." Rosen and Wolfire's John Graham elaborated on their "leave no customer behind" approach at a GDC panel on Monday morning, emphasizing the importance of including platforms like Mac OS and Linux in addition to PC. The decision to spread beyond Windows was informed by Wolfire's prior experience selling its own games, with anthropomorphic bunny basher Lugaru HD racking up doubly strong sales through Mac and Linux support. Linux users seemed particularly grateful for the support -- when the first bundle concluded after racking up $1,273,613, Linux users had spent the most with $14.44 on average. "If you reach out to them, they want to take care of you too," John Graham said.
Humble Bundle 2 closes, earns over $1.8 million
The Humble Indie Bundle 2 -- which added last year's bundle during its promotion -- has raised over $1.8 million. The name-your-own-price, DRM-free set included indie darlings like Braid, Machinarium and Osmos, along with several others. Purchasers could decide whether their years of saved pennies went to developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the Child's Play Charity. They could also provide a "humble tip" for the bundle's organizers. Humble Bundle organizers plan on releasing more detailed statistics later but, beyond the final sum, we know that there were 232,849 purchases, with an average payment for the 12-game bundle of $7.83. Windows operating systems made up a majority of the purchases, but Linux users offered up the most support with an average purchase of $13.76. If you're all good little boys and girls, the Humble Bundle might return next year with a new set of indie greats.
Child's Play nearing $2 million in donations
Donations from charitable gamers like you have pushed the Child's Play 2010 donation total to an all-time high of $1.85 million -- all of which will go towards purchasing toys and games for children's hospitals across the globe. That's a bit higher than last year's total of $1.78 million. It's also dangerously close to $2 million, which just looks like a gargantuan sum of money, doesn't it? If you haven't already donated to this worthy, worthy cause -- or even if you have! -- why not give a little something something to bring this total over the $2 mil mark? You could even get some incredible games for doing so, which is the very definition of a win-win transaction.
Humble Indie Bundle 2 now includes Humble Indie Bundle 1
It just became so much easier to compare last year's Humble Indie Bundle with this year's Humble Indie Bundle 2 in terms of value -- because as of today, Humble Indie Bundle 2 includes last year's Bundle. It's official: these developers have lost their damn minds (for charity). If you've already bought Bundle 2, you're free to download Bundle 1, which has World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, Penumbra Overture, and Samorost 2, all playable on PC, Mac, and Linux. If you haven't bought Bundle 2 yet, you're only eligible to get the bonus games if you spend more than the average payment of $7.34. You have through Christmas Day to pick up this year's offerings. You can download these straight from the site, but you can also unlock them in Steam (by getting a keys from the HIB site), with a few caveats. The Steam keys are "a little glitchy," lacking access to Samorost 2 and lacking Mac versions of Gish and Aquaria. In addition, organizer Wolfire only has 150,000 keys to hand out, so if you already have the games on Steam, or you can deal with just downloading the games (DRM-free) and not having that Steam integration, perhaps you could leave the Steam key for someone else.
Humble Bundle 2 adds Steam & Desura support, revenues top $1.17M
Somewhere in a dank Cold War-era bunker, a gathering of suits is plotting to use the "pay what you want" business model for evil. For now, the strategy continues to make the Humble Indie Bundle #2 initiative a startlingly good success -- for all! If you can't resist wrapping your bundle in a layer of Steam DRM (worth it for the achievements?), you can now redeem a registration code through your HumbleBundle.com download page that adds Braid, Machinarium and Osmosis to your Steam Library. (If and when Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans are released on Steam, they'll automatically be added to your Library, as well.) Humble Bundle #2 purchasers will also notice a button on their download pages to redeem their games through Desura, the indie-focused digital distribution platform launched by ModDB earlier this year. Speaking of purchasers, the Humble Bundle #2 has been bought by more than 158,600 good Samaritans (and/or deal seekers) for an average cost of $7.41, as of this morning. Total revenues have topped $1,175,000 since the bundle's release on December 14 and appear poised to surpass the first bundle's contributions of $1,273,613. And speaking of contributions, Markus Persson's chart-topping $2,000 payment was recently bumped by a generous gift from "grflwitz," which came to a nice round number: $3,141.59. [Image credit: Paul Smith]
Humble Indie Bundle 2 grosses over $500K in day-one purchases, led by Minecraft's Persson
"Humble Bundle" no longer seems like an appropriate name. In less than 24 hours upon release, the pay-what-you-want indie game collection Humble Bundle #2 earned over $500,000 in revenue and appears to be well on its way to beating the first bundle's seven-figure returns. The Humble Bundle website offers an interesting look into purchasing trends by providing real-time stats. As of writing, over 70,000 people have purchased the pack, including Minecraft creator Markus Persson, who paid an extraordinary $2,000, and Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling, who went with a generous $500 payment. The average selling price for the bundle is currently $7 and change. The Humble Bundle #2 includes five celebrated indie titles: Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos and Revenge of the Titans. Purchasers can divide their payments between the developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Child's Play Charity as they see fit.
Humble Indie Bundle 2 offers more Mac gaming deals
The Humble Indie Bundle is back for round two, which means that you've got another deal with some terrific indie games to run on your Mac, completely DRM-free. This time, you get Jonathan Blow's excellent time-shifting platformer Braid, quality puzzle game Machinarium, iOS favorite Osmos, and Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans, two titles still under development. Just like last time, you can pay any price you want. While the games by themselves would cost you $85, people have paid up to $1000 just to promote and support independent game development -- and just like last time, all of the games are playable on Mac, Windows and Linux as you choose. You can also give any or all of the money donated to charity, so really this is about as awesome as a game deal gets. Pay whatever you want to someone worthy of the money, and you get five games to do with as you please. Last time around, the bundle raised upwards of a million dollars, and Linux users, we're told, were twice as generous as Windows users. That seems to be the case this time as well (with Mac users only a little better than Windows), so let's head on over and represent, since it's definitely true that Mac users are willing to pay a quality price for quality software. I can tell you outright that Braid and Osmos are worth a $20 donation on their own, so head on over, give some money, and support some more than generous independent game developers.
Humble Indie Bundle 2 revealed, name your price for Braid, Machinarium and more
Looks like the organizers of the second annual Humble Indie Bundle are busting out the big guns for this year's charity drive -- the name-your-own-price, DRM-free package includes Jonathan Blow's time-twisting platformer Braid, the infinitely charming adventure game Machinarium, the side-scrolling shooter Cortex Command, the super soothing (and equally pretty) Osmos and the tower defense-meets-RTS gem Revenge of the Titans. That's a whole lot of bang for your buck, or nickel, or thousand bucks. This year, purchasers can choose how much of their donation goes to four possible recipients: The games' developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Child's Play Charity or the Humble Indie Bundle organizers. Yes, you can not only customize how much altruism you're going to exhibit with your purchase, you can also customize where that altruism goes! Unless, of course, you pirate it, sending out no altruism to nowhere. You monster.
Humble Indie Bundle now Steam-compatible, second Bundle teased
If you were one of the charitable souls who purchased the Humble Indie Bundle earlier this year, donating an amount of your choosing to Child's Play while also supporting independent game development -- or, if you were one of those cretins who pirated the package instead of paying a penny for it -- we've got good news. The Bundle's creators have worked out a deal with Valve to allow the five games therein to be activated on the Steam platform. How convenient! If you missed out on the choose-your-own-price collection when it was available this past summer, don't get too glum -- the Bundle's official site has been updated with a teaser for a second dose of affordable indie games. We'll let you know when we hear more about this collection, which we're temporarily naming the "Presumably Even Humbler Indie Bundle."
