The Humble Indie Bundles or Humble Bundles are a series of game bundles, that are sold and distributed online at a price determined by the purchaser. The games are multi-platform, DRM-free, and independently developed, and buyers can set the revenue split between the developers, charities and humble bundle organizers.
The first bundle was organized and managed by Wolfire Games. Beginning with the second bundle a separate company spun-off, Humble Bundle, Inc., with the sole purpose of making bundles. The bundles are made available for purchase during limited time frames. Purchasers are able to set how much they wish to pay for the bundles and how they want their money to be distributed between developers of the games, Humble Tip (which organizes the promotion) and charities, some of which have included: Child's Play, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Red Cross. The games in the bundles run on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux-based systems and are digitally distributed initially without digital rights management (DRM) controls.[1] Although the bundles are still advertised as DRM-free, three recently included games require product keys for their multi-player modes, generally considered a form of DRM. Eight bundle drives have been held to date, breaking over $11 million in total sale and charitable donations.
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The idea for the Bundle was from Jeff Rosen of Wolfire Games.[2] Rosen describes the inspiration coming to him through similar sales of bundle packages on the Steam platform.[2] Rosen had noted that such sales would have viral word-of-mouth spread across the Internet.[3] Influence also came from a previous "pay-what-you-want" sale for World of Goo upon the title's first anniversary;[2][4] over 57,000 copies of the game were purchased during this sale, generating over US$117,000 after considering PayPal handling fees.[5][6] Rosen by this point was well connected with other independent developers, for example his brother David is listed as being a game tester for the Penumbra series, and Penumbra's composer Mikko Tarmia is now contributing to Wolfire Games' upcoming game project Overgrowth. Wolfire had also recently teamed with Unknown Worlds Entertainment to offer a bundle based on their Natural Selection 2 game.[2] The porter of Lugaru to Linux was Ryan C. Gordon, who was also responsible for porting Aquaria to Linux. With his close ties to these independent developers, as well as Ron Carmel of 2D Boy, Rosen was able to assemble the package, taking advantage of merchant sales systems offered by PayPal, Amazon Payments, and Google Checkout to minimize the cost of transactions and distribution.[2]
Though achieving word of mouth was a key element of the potential success of the bundle, Rosen also recognized that the process to purchase the Bundles had to be simple; including elements like user account registration or the use of a secondary download client would have potentially driven away sales.[3] Rosen also sought to include charities in the bundle, allowing the purchaser to choose how to distribute the funds between the developers and charities. Rosen believed Child's Play was a worthwhile cause that brought video games to hospitalized children and helped to fight the stigma of video games, while he selected the Electronic Frontier Foundation to support their anti-DRM stance.[2] The means of "pay-what-you-want" would allow purchasers to simply give the money to the charities, but Rosen felt this was not an issue and would "consider that a success" of the sale.[2] Rosen and Wolfire employee John Graham provided technical support during the sales, handling thousands of requests through a few all-night email and chat sessions.[3]
The first Humble Indie Bundle went on sale from May 4 through May 11, 2010. Furthermore, three studios offered a further incentive for purchasers during the sale, in that if more than US$1 million was raised by the effort, the source code for Gish, Penumbra and Lugaru would then be offered.[7]. Midway through the sale period, Wolfire Games was approached by Amanita Design studios, who wanted to help contribute to the cause in their own way, by donating their game Samorost 2 to the bundle, allowing those that already had purchased the bundle to further download that title.[7]
The promotion was met with what the organizers described as a strong success, achieving more than US$1 million in sales within the week from approximately 116,000 donations.[8][9] After the extension, the total amount of money raised by the effort was in excess of $1,270,000.[10] Based on the distribution set by users, the two charities received about 31% of the total money raised, while each of the five developers saw an average of US$166,000 in sales.[9][10] About half of the sales were to Microsoft Windows platforms, while the MacOS X and Linux sales roughly equally split the rest. By tracking pricing, Wolfire Games found that Linux users were the most generous, paying about US$14 per bundle, followed by MacOS X users (US$10) and Windows users (US$7–8).[8][11] Rosen noted the presence of donations as large as $3333 and $1337 near the final hours of the sale, and believes social link-sharing sites like Reddit helped them to reach the $1 million milestone.[12] As a result of reaching the US$1 million goal, the source code for the game engines for Gish, Penumbra, Lugaru, and, due to the overwhelming success, Aquaria, was made available under the GNU General Public License; art, music, and other creative assets for these games were not included.[9] Wolfire also extended the offer on the sale for an additional four days.[9]
While many of the included games were available on Valve's Steam platform, the bundle was not initially integrated with Steam. On December 9, 2010, seven months after the bundle's release, a Steam product key was emailed to purchasers of the bundle that allowed most of the bundle to be downloaded from Steam.[13] This made downloading and playing the bundle more convenient for Steam users and also allowed Steam users to collect Steam achievements from the bundle games that implemented them. Samorost 2 was added to the Steam accounts of those who had redeemed their codes for the Humble Indie Bundle on June 1, 2011.
With the success of the first bundle, a second Humble Indie Bundle was launched on December 14, 2010, featuring a new set of five games from independent developers. Charitable donations continued to go towards Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.[14] The new bundle included the launch of new Linux ports for Braid and Cortex Command, while another game Revenge of the Titans was first made available for all three platforms as part of the bundle.[15] While Wolfire Studios is still hosting and managing the sale and post-sale downloads, they do not have any games in the bundle; instead, they have allowed for purchasers to tip Wolfire while paying for the games in the bundle.[16]
The second Bundle was able to break $500,000 in sales within one day.[17] Sales surpassed $1 million about 5 days into the sale, upon which purchasers were able to unlock the games on Steam and the Desura digital download service.[18][19] As a promotion for the second bundle the first bundle was added to all bundles that were purchased at that point and to all later purchases that contributed more than the average chosen price.[20] Since the sale exceeded $1.75M, Puppy Games has also released the source code for Revenge of the Titans[21] under a BSD-like license while reserving all rights to almost all game assets. The sale cleared $1.8 million in sales after ten days of sales.[22] Similar to the first bundle, around 50% of the total donations were from MacOS X and Linux users, which Rosen later identified as a strong market for indie game developers.[3]
The third Humble Bundle sale started on April 12, 2011, and features five games from the indie developer Frozenbyte, including Trine, Shadowgrounds, and Shadowgrounds Survivor, for Microsoft Windows, MacOS X, and Linux. It also contained an executable version along with source code for an unfinished game, Jack Claw, and a pre-order for their upcoming game, Splot.[23] Within three days of the launch of the sale, it had raised more than $550,000.[24] By April 22, 2011, the Bundle had surpassed $700,000, at which point Frozenbyte added the source code for both Shadowgrounds games, a level editor for Trine, Mac OS and Linux versions of Jack Claw (in addition to the Windows version), and a demo for Splot. The timeframe for purchasing this bundle ended at midnight on April 26, 2011.[25]
As to the origins of the third bundle, Frozenbyte had been considering raising money for its continued game development through a pay-what-you-want sale for quite some time, but was unsure how to implement such a payment and distribution system and were worried that if they attempted to do such a sale on their own it would not generate enough interest. Impressed by the previous bundles, they contacted John Graham and Jeffrey Rosen who agreed to the idea of making a bundle entirely composed of Frozenbyte titles.[26] Most of the money generated by the sale will go to finishing the development of Trine 2.[27]
The fourth Humble Bundle, but the third carrying the Indie title, was launched on July 26, 2011, featuring a new set of five games from independent developers. Charitable donations continued to go towards Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In the case of VVVVVV, the game was not only updated to run on Linux machines, but featured a new completely rebuilt game engine in C++ instead of on the Adobe Flash platform, and included a level editor and several levels submitted by other indie developers. These changes were prompted by the opportunity for VVVVVV to be featured as part of the upcoming bundle.[28] On August 1, 2011 the game Steel Storm was added as a "Bonus Game" for all who purchase the bundle.[29] Midway through the sale, purchasers were given the opportunity to play Minecraft until August 14, 2011.[29] On August 3, 2011, the Humble Indie Bundle #2 was given to those that had bought Bundle #3 before that date. To obtain it after that date, users must pay over the current Average, at the time they decide to purchase Bundle #3. On August 5th, 2011, Atom Zombie Smasher was added as a bonus game to anyone who purchased the Humble Indie Bundle 3.
Within 17 hours, the Bundle had broken $500,000 in total sales with over 107,000 bundles purchased, a significant improvement relative to the Frozenbyte bundle.[30] The sale broke $1 million less than a week from its onset.[28] Sales hit $2 million on August 8, finishing up with more than $2.1M in revenue.
On September 28, 2011, the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle was announced. Originally the bundle only included the game Frozen Synapse. On September 30, the game Trauma was added as a free bonus;[31] the game SpaceChem was added in a similar manner on October 5.[32] Paying more than the average price would also entitle the purchaser to the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle games. The bundle closed with more than $1.1 million in total revenue.[33]
On October 31, 2011, the Humble Voxatron Debut was released. One game, Voxatron by Lexaloffle Games, was initially included. The bundle ran for 14 days. At the time of the bundle's release, the game was labeled as Voxatron Alpha. The Binding of Isaac and Blocks that Matter were added on the following day.[34] On November 9, 2011, four more games were added to the bundle as a free bonus, three from the developers of Voxatron - Zen Puzzle Garden, Chocolate Castle and Jasper's Journeys, and one co-developed by one of The Binding of Isaac developers, Gish.[35] At closing, the debut raised $902,453.
On November 22, 2011, the Humble Introversion Bundle was released. The bundle included four games by Introversion Software: Darwinia, Multiwinia, DEFCON and Uplink. If the average price was beaten, two more games were given to the buyer: Aquaria by Bit Blot and Crayon Physics Deluxe by Kloonigames. Two technology demos by Introversion were also included, only for Windows, one including destructible Voxel buildings, the other showing the procedural generation of a city. On November 29, 2011, an additional game was added, Dungeons of Dredmor by Gaslamp Games. The source code of all the released Introversion games (excluding the technology demos) was also made available to the buyers. [36]
On December 13, 2011, the fourth Humble Indie Bundle was released. The bundle included five games, Jamestown by Final Form Games, Bit.Trip Runner by Gaijin Games, Super Meat Boy by Team Meat, Shank by Klei Entertainment and NightSky by Nicalis. Paying more than the current average price grants the buyer two additional games: Cave Story+ by Nicalis and Gratuitous Space Battles by Positech Games. This is also the first bundle to benefit the American Red Cross. A vote by the developers of games included in the Bundle preferred the American Red Cross to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for this bundle.[37] Within a day, the Humble Indie Bundle 4 surpassed $1 million in revenue, faster than previous bundles.[38] Later in the sale, soundtracks for all the games were added as a free bonus to anyone who purchased the Bundle.[39]
A further addition to the sale was the inclusion of five original games from the 3rd Bundle along with their soundtracks; these were made available to anyone that had purchased the 4th Bundle before their addition and to anyone that purchases the Bundle at higher than the average price.[40][41]
The sale concluded with more than $2.37 million in revenue and over 435,000 bundles sold. The sale also saw the largest donations of $16,005.27 and $8,542 to the project from the "Humble Brony Bundle", a group made up of "brony" fans for the show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and Markus "Notch" Persson, the developer of Minecraft, respectively, due to a friendly wager between the two.[42]
The first promotion was considered to be very successful. Rosen noted that they considered the million-dollar goal as a best-case scenario, but once the sale actually started, "it was immediately clear that we were on to something".[12] Rosen would later attribute part of the success to Ars Technica writer Mike Thomspon, stating that he "immediately saw the potential" of the Bundle in an article written for the website just prior to the Bundle's sale period.[43] Brandon Boyer of Boing Boing believed that it provided a model that "seems it could and should be repeated".[9] The move to offer games in a price and manner that consumers were willing to buy was contrasted to larger software publishers that place artificial limitations on their content; Mike Masnick of Techdirt believed the Humble Bundle promotion worked as it "focus[ed] on giving people real reasons to buy, rather than just feeling entitled to define the terms under which they buy and looking for ways to limit those who want to interact with you in a different manner".[44] The source for the promotion's website has been requested of Wolfire by several other groups, according to Rosen; Rosen continues to believe that many similar charitable sales can be seen in the future from the Humble Bundle's success.[12] For future Bundles, Rosen desires to include lesser-known titles in contrast to World of Goo and Braid, but has had to already reject some developers' requests to be included in a Bundle, claiming the games' quality may tarnish the Humble Indie Bundle branding. Instead, he believes smaller games with no wide profile and are "legitimately good" would be ideal for inclusion in future Bundles.[3]
In April 2011, it was announced that Sequoia Capital had provided venture capital of $4.7 million towards future Humble Indie Bundle development.[45]
As a result of the success of the bundle, other groups have started similar pay-what-you-want plans for other indie games, including "Indie Gala", "Indie Royale" and "Little Big Bunch".[38]
PC Gamer named the Wolfire team as founders of the Humble Indie Bundle as their 2011 community heroes for their support of the indie game development market.[46]
Despite the ability to get the games at nearly zero cost, Wolfire Games estimate that 25% of the traceable downloads for the first Bundle have come from software piracy by links provided in some forums that bypass the payment screen to access the games; Wolfire further surmises additional piracy occurred through BitTorrent-type peer-to-peer sharing services.[47] Rosen noted they purposely removed much of the DRM associated with games to appeal to those that would otherwise engage in software piracy, through both having the games ship without DRM and by having only limited copy protection on their website.[47] Rosen also stated that for about ten users that emailed Wolfire about being unable to pay for the software, he personally donated on their behalf.[47] Rosen comments that there may be legitimate reasons for those that appear to be pirating the game, including the inability to use the payment methods provided or that they had made a single large donation for multiple copies.[47] However, he also considered that there are players that would simply forward the download links to "take pleasure in spreading the pirated links to their friends or anonymous buddies for fun".[47] Wolfire Games did take action to stop predatory sites, such as the closely named "wollfire.com", from selling illegal copies of the bundle.[48]
While aware of the presumed software piracy, Rosen says that Wolfire will take no steps to limit it, believing that "making the download experience worse for generous contributors in the name of punishing pirates doesn't really fit with the spirit of the bundle".[49] Rosen noted that by offering the source code of the games as an incentive, they would hope that "the community will help build them up with the same vigor that crackers tear DRM down".[12] David Wong of Cracked, in considering several reasons for the negative stereotypes for video game players, used the Humble Indie Bundle as an example of demonstrating the "sense of entitlement" that some video game players have, pointing to the high rate of piracy and use of bandwidth as alternatives to spending "even one penny".[50]
In preparing for the second Humble Indie Bundle sale, John Graham acknowledged that some may still download the game through illegal means, but also said that the organizers of the bundle gave their best effort to make the process of purchasing the games simple, and they also wished to create a social impact with the sales by including contributions to Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.[16] An anonymous survey conducted by Wolfire for those who felt it necessary to acquire the second Bundle from other illegitimate sources showed that some preferred the option of using peer-to-peer sharing services like BitTorrent to improve the speed and reliability of the download; as a result, Wolfire added the option to download the games through BitTorrent, hoping to entice more people to acquire the game legitimately.[51]
Several games in the Humble Indie Bundles have been released as open-source software as a result of the Bundles reaching certain sales levels. One such game was Wolfire's own Lugaru HD, where they released the engine under the GNU General Public License, and also included the various art assets, level designs, and other creative elements under a freely redistributable license for personal use.[52] Their intent was to allow programmers to experiment and improve the game's engine using the associated assets.[53] Wolfire later began selling the title Lugaru HD on the Mac App Store for $9.99. However, some time afterwards, another company, iCoder, used the open-source resources to recreate the same game for the App Store, charging only $0.99 for their version Lugaru. iCoder claims they have the right to recreate and charge for the game under the GNU license, but Jeffery Rosen notes that this did not apply to the art assets.[53][54][55] Also, the GPL license is not compatible with Apple's AppStore.[56] The iCoder version was taken down from the App Store after about a week since Wolfire notified them of the issue, though so far no explanation has been given by Apple.[57] As the iCoder version of the application was popular, being the 60th most downloaded game application prior to its removal, Wolfire offered those that purchased the iCoder version a free copy of their version and codes to unlock the game from within Steam.[58]
Rosen notes that the incident may discourage developers from releasing their source in the future.[53]
The Humble Indie Bundle #4 overlapped with a large holiday sale on the Steam software service, which offered numerous prizes by completing some achievements associated with the offered games in Steam, including entries into a raffle to win every game on the Steam service. During this overlap, Wolfire found that some users were abusing the system, paying the minimum amount ($0.01) for the Bundle, registering new Steam accounts, and using the newly purchased games to improve their chances for the Steam raffle. Wolfire considered this "unfair to legitimate entrants" in the Steam contest, and to stop it, the company altered the sale so that only those that paid more than $1.00 would receive Steam keys for the games.[59][60]
Alexander Zubov of Kot-in-Action Creative Artel who developed the Steel Storm games complained in an interview about the trouble he had getting his games accepted into the Bundles, originally trying to push their game's first episode as a free bonus for the second Bundle, and then trying to get their full game into the third. Zubov recalls that he had heard "nothing back" until they made a "last minute decision" to include Steel Storm: Burning Retribution in the Humble Indie Bundle 3. Even then, Zubov further described his dissatisfaction with how payment was handled, saying that they were "offered a tiny-tiny fraction of what HIB3 made, a very small (compare to the profits of HIB3) fixed amount of money" even though, according to Zubov, "when Steel Storm was released as a bonus, their sales jumped up significantly." He also mentioned that despite claims by the organizers that their sales would "sky rocket just because [they] were in the HIB3", their actual amount of sales remained relatively constant.
Zubov did however note that their inclusion in the third bundle "did get a lot of users who redeemed their copy of Steel Storm on Steam and Desura" and that they hoped this would help keep their "current user base, which we gained with HIB3, interested in our upcoming games". He concluded his comments about his experiences by saying that "only time will tell if HIB3 was [an] awesome deal or not. Maybe, maybe not. If it works out as a long term investment, it will be awesome indeed. If not, I will never ever participate in such capacity (as a bonus item for a small fixed payout) in the future HIB bundles. We all do have bills to pay and families to feed, don't we?"[61]
The technology website Phoronix has also reported that there has also been some detractors of the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle, with editor Michael Larabel claiming that the Bundle does not seem to be "as popular as some of the past bundles" and that "the pace of sales isn't as fast as some of the other bundles." More importantly, he also explains that the "bundle has actually resulted in some complaints among gamers", with most of the complaints centred around that fact that originally there was "just one game being officially part of this bundle". Larabel does note that they did later add more games to the bundle as bonuses and that "adding more value to the bundle may generate some additional sales", but does conclude that the initially small offer has caused there to be less "interest among gamers this time around."[62]
| Bundle | Period Offered | Game | Developer | Initial Release Year | Total Raised | Total purchases | Average price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Humble Indie Bundle 1 | May 4–10*, 2010 | World of Goo | 2D Boy | 2008 | US$1.27+ M | 138,813 | $9.18 |
| Aquaria | Bit Blot | 2007 | |||||
| Gish | Cryptic Sea | 2004 | |||||
| Penumbra: Overture | Frictional Games | 2007 | |||||
| Lugaru HD | Wolfire Games | 2005 | |||||
| Samorost 2 | Amanita Design | 2007 | |||||
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| Humble Indie Bundle 2 | December 14–24, 2010 | Braid | Jonathan Blow Number None Studios |
2008 | US$1.8+ M | 232,855 | $7.85 |
| Cortex Command | Data Realms LLC | Currently in playable Beta | |||||
| Machinarium | Amanita Design | 2009 | |||||
| Osmos | Hemisphere Games | 2009 | |||||
| Revenge of the Titans | Puppy Games | 2011 | |||||
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| Humble Frozenbyte Bundle | April 12–26, 2011 | Trine | Frozenbyte | 2009 | US$0.9+ M | 183,219 | $4.97 |
| Shadowgrounds | Frozenbyte | 2005 | |||||
| Shadowgrounds Survivor | Frozenbyte | 2007 | |||||
| Splot | Frozenbyte | Unreleased Pre-Order | |||||
| Jack Claw | Frozenbyte | Unreleased Prototype Bonus | |||||
| Humble Indie Bundle 3 | July 26 – August 9, 2011 | Crayon Physics Deluxe | Kloonigames | 2009 | US$2.16+ M | 372,399 | $5.83 |
| Cogs | Lazy 8 Studios | 2009 | |||||
| VVVVVV | Terry Cavanagh | 2010 | |||||
| Hammerfight | Kranx Productions | 2009 | |||||
| And Yet It Moves | Broken Rules | 2009 | |||||
| Steel Storm | Kot-in-Action Creative Artel | 2010 | |||||
| Atom Zombie Smasher | Blendo Games | 2011 | |||||
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| Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle | September 28 – October 12, 2011 | Frozen Synapse | Mode 7 Games | 2011 | US$1.11+ M | 231,810 | $4.81 |
| TRAUMA | Krystian Majewski | 2010 | |||||
| SpaceChem | Zachtronics Industries | 2011 | |||||
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| Humble Voxatron Debut | October 31 – November 14, 2011 | Voxatron | Lexaloffle | Alpha release | US$0.9+ M | 172,270 | $5.24 |
| Blocks That Matter | Swing Swing Submarine | 2011 | |||||
| The Binding of Isaac | Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl | 2011 | |||||
| Gish | Cryptic Sea | 2004 | |||||
| Chocolate Castle | Lexaloffle | 2007 | |||||
| Jasper's Journeys | Lexaloffle | 2008 | |||||
| Zen Puzzle Garden | Lexaloffle | Unknown | |||||
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| Humble Introversion Bundle | November 22 – December 6, 2011 | Darwinia | Introversion Software | 2005 | US$0.77+ M | 190,261 | $4.09 |
| Uplink | Introversion Software | 2001 | |||||
| Multiwinia | Introversion Software | 2008 | |||||
| DEFCON | Introversion Software | 2006 | |||||
| Voxel Tech Demo | Introversion Software | Tech Demo | |||||
| City Generator Tech Demo | Introversion Software | Tech Demo | |||||
| Aquaria | Bit Blot | 2007 | |||||
| Crayon Physics Deluxe | Kloonigames | 2009 | |||||
| Dungeons of Dredmor | Gaslamp Games | 2011 | |||||
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| Humble Indie Bundle 4 | December 13 – December 27, 2011 | Jamestown | Final Form Games | 2011 | US$2.37+ M | 435,249 | $5.45 |
| Bit.Trip Runner | Gaijin Games | 2011 | |||||
| Super Meat Boy | Team Meat | 2010 | |||||
| Shank | Klei Entertainment | 2010 | |||||
| NightSky HD | Nicalis | 2011 | |||||
| Cave Story+ | Studio Pixel | 2011 | |||||
| Gratuitous Space Battles | Positech Games | 2009 | |||||
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