Humble Bundle Has Earned $100M For Devs, $50M for Charities

[StewShearerOld]

Humble Bundle Has Earned $100M For Devs, $50M for Charities


Humble Bundle co-founder John Graham says that many developers "enjoy" the revenue brought in by the site's sales.

There are some who might say that the rise of <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/humble%20bundle>Humble Bundle has been <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/features/11819-Bring-Back-the-Box-What-We-Have-Lost-With-Digital-Distribution>a bad thing. After all, while "pay what you want" pricing is good for consumers, it's not hard to see how some might be perturbed by the idea of games, often expensive and time consuming to make, being sold practically for pennies. Perhaps hoping to shine a light on its more positive accomplishments, Humble Bundle has announced today that it's delivered more than $100 million to developers and $50 million to charities since its first sale in May 2010.

These numbers, according to company co-founder John Graham, serve as evidence of the value of Humble Bundle, especially when it comes to charity. Currently, Humble Bundle gives customers the option to direct a portion of their purchase to more than 50 different charity organizations, many of which he says have been thrilled with the influx of funding that can result from association with a Bundle. "Charities often are very surprised by the amount of money sent their way by our community," said Graham, in an interview. "Even the larger charities like the Red Cross are amazed once the payment arrives. It has often been the case that we exceed charity expectations and they've had the good problem of figuring out how to scale up the work they do."

Speaking about game developers meanwhile, Graham acknowledged that the proceeds from bundles, once split between studios and shared with charities, can sometimes be less than worthwhile when you're talking about profit alone. He would go on, however, to claim that many developers still "enjoy the goodwill and buzz that gets driven onto their titles during our promotions" along with "the revenues we are able to bring them."

One thing, at least, is clear. Humble Bundle has come a long way since it launched four years ago.

Source: Joystiq





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[Avaholic03]

While those numbers are great (especially for charity), I still find it unsettling that even really shitty AAA games make more than that during launch week, whereas that $100M number is for dozens of games over 4.5 years. Many of those games really deserve more return on investment. "Goodwill and buzz" won't put food on your table (especially if you don't produce a follow-up game for a few years, by then everyone forgot who you were).

 

[Entitled]

Many of those games really deserve more return on investment.

Actually, in terms of "return on investment" dozens of games together earning $100 million, can be still better off than a single AAA game doing so alone in a week.

Remember, that AAA game also costed hundreds of millions on it's own, while many of the indies were developed from a budget of literally zero dollars spent, or even if you assume that their hobbyist devs' the work-hours inherently deserved a return, that would still only be around tens of thousands of dollars per game. Proportionally, a three-man team's two year long work earning $1 million, is about as much of a return on investments, as, say, AssCreed Unity earning one billion dollars (for which it would need to sell as much as the rest of it's franchise combined).

Also remember, that for the humble bundles, these are NOT first week salse, but an extra windfall for games that have already went successful once. They can afford to offer pay-what-you-want, because anyone who wanted to buy their game already did, and any extra dollar is just that, an extr dollar out of nowhere.

The whole beauty of the indie market, is that compared to AAA games, it's so efficient that if even just 10% as many customers are spending 10% of the budget per head on it, they still end up funding the production of several times as many play-hours worth of content, only more creative and diverse.

 

[AzraelSteel]

While those numbers are great (especially for charity), I still find it unsettling that even really shitty AAA games make more than that during launch week, whereas that $100M number is for dozens of games over 4.5 years. Many of those games really deserve more return on investment. "Goodwill and buzz" won't put food on your table (especially if you don't produce a follow-up game for a few years, by then everyone forgot who you were).

I've actually heard devs of some of those games talk about it, and a lot of times things like the Humble Bundles and Steam sales raise the games' profiles as well as sending a burst of (often sorely needed) cash the way of the devs to produce their next game. It might not be as big as what they'd get if all those people paid full price, but many of them are very aware they never would have gotten most of those sales otherwise.

 

[direkiller]

Glad to hear this.

As of Late I have taken to using the humble store as my indi game filter.
As Unlike green light, it seems to have a filter for the scam games just by virtue of what it is.

 

[Strazdas]

This is strange as it states that peope chose to pay more to developers than to charity. personally i always do around 80% charity 20% developers ratios.

 

[direkiller]

This is strange as it states that peope chose to pay more to developers than to charity. personally i always do around 80% charity 20% developers ratios.

The humble store accounts for ~17million of the dev's/humble tip while 1.7m of the charity

So the humble bundles are not as sckued that way as it seems

 

[Strazdas]

This is strange as it states that peope chose to pay more to developers than to charity. personally i always do around 80% charity 20% developers ratios.

The humble store accounts for ~17million of the dev's/humble tip while 1.7m of the charity

So the humble bundles are not as sckued that way as it seems

Humble store is just a steam reseller (literally, it just sell steam keys). Meanwhile with humblebundles you can choose where your money goes, which means that you can choose more to go to charity than to the devs.

 

[direkiller]

This is strange as it states that peope chose to pay more to developers than to charity. personally i always do around 80% charity 20% developers ratios.

The humble store accounts for ~17million of the dev's/humble tip while 1.7m of the charity

So the humble bundles are not as sckued that way as it seems

Humble store is just a steam reseller (literally, it just sell steam keys). Meanwhile with humblebundles you can choose where your money goes, which means that you can choose more to go to charity than to the devs.

That's exactly what I was saying.
The store is 20% of the total devs money while 2% of the charity
When given the option do people send more to the charity.

 

[JSoup]

This is strange as it states that peope chose to pay more to developers than to charity. personally i always do around 80% charity 20% developers ratios.

The humble store accounts for ~17million of the dev's/humble tip while 1.7m of the charity

So the humble bundles are not as sckued that way as it seems

Humble store is just a steam reseller (literally, it just sell steam keys). Meanwhile with humblebundles you can choose where your money goes, which means that you can choose more to go to charity than to the devs.

That's exactly what I was saying.
The store is 20% of the total devs money while 2% of the charity
When given the option do people send more to the charity.

I know I do.
I have always set it to 100% charity and assumed that most people did similar. Apparently I was wrong. :/