Since their debut in 2010, Humble Bundles and the Humble Store have put out a lot of sweet deals on games. They've also raised a big pile of money for charities. The company announced today that it has now raised more than $100 million for organizations around the world including Child's Play, the American Red Cross, the EFF, and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières.
The very first Humble Bundle—the Humble Indie Bundle—went live on May 4, 2010, with World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Penumbra: Overture, Lugara HD, and eventually Samorost 2, for as much (or as little) as people wanted to pay. I thought that was a monumentally bad idea—not the games, which are great, but the choose-your-own-price concept—but it ended up pulling in well over $1 million over the course of just a week, a big chunk of which went to EFF and Child's Play. The second Humble Indie Bundle came in December with Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos, and Revenge of the Titans, and approached $2 million in sales.
"After the first Humble Indie Bundle, we were overwhelmed by everyone's generosity," co-founder and COO John Graham said. "We remember delivering the first check to charity by hand and it was a larger amount of money than anything we had ever seen before. This milestone is more than 500 times bigger than that and is almost too big for me to really comprehend. We’re forever grateful to the Humble community and this huge positive impact they have made on the world."
Along with the individual Humble Bundles, the Humble Store and Humble Monthly subscription service are also big successes, having so far raised more than $9.3 million for charity between them.
The Humble Store is currently in the midst of its End of Summer Sale, which for the next 24-ish hours includes Double Fine's brilliant Psychonauts for free. And here's how it all began:
