you want drm free cross platform helps charity . formation 2010 ; 6 years ago 2010 type privately held delaware corporation 1 headquarters san francisco ca website www.humblebundle.com formerly called humble indie bundles humble bundle inc. formerly humble indie bundles 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 mac os x 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 and the wikimedia foundation . 2 by october 2015 the total charitable amount raised by the bundles exceeded 65 million across 50 different charities . 3 by the end of october 2014 participating developers have grossed more than 100 million . 4 5 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 . as a corporation humble bundle is headquartered in san francisco california with about 50 employees . 3 contents 1 concept 1.1 humble store 1.2 humble weekly bundles 1.3 humble flash bundles 1.4 humble monthly 2 humble bundles 3 analysis 3.1 success 3.2 piracy 3.3 software counterfeits 3.4 abuse 3.5 criticism 3.5.1 developer compensation 3.5.2 sale timing 3.5.3 linux port 3.5.4 games with drm 4 references 5 external links concept edit total purchases vs. time the idea for the bundle was from jeff rosen of wolfire games . 6 rosen describes the inspiration coming to him through similar sales of bundle packages on the steam platform . 6 rosen had noted that such sales would have viral word of mouth spread across the internet . 7 influence also came from a previous pay what you want sale for world of goo upon the title s first anniversary ; 6 8 over 57 000 copies of the game were purchased during this sale generating over us 117 000 after considering paypal handling fees . 9 10 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 . 6 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 . 6 the site later added the option to pay via bitcoin only through coinbase . 11 12 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 . 7 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 . 6 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 . 6 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 . 7 in april 2011 it was announced that sequoia capital had invested 4.7 million of venture capital into humble bundle . 13 a dedicated team of about ten employees created by this fund oversee the humble bundle ; they work with developers to determine scheduling and availability of games and make decisions about which games to include within the bundles asking themselves will this be exciting for gamers according to richard esguerra one of the current employees . 14 the full arrangements with developers to create the bundle typically conclude a month before the bundle goes live . the humble bundle group earns about 15 % of the total funds raised . 14 humble store edit humble store logo the humble store is an extension of the sales system developed for managing the humble bundles . it offers the capabilities of the payment and customer services that they had created for the various bundles to independent developers as an alternate marketplace for these titles . according to joshua knoles of the humble bundle team they wanted to create something that would allow developers to easily sell their games through their own web site as well as provide a painless buying experience for purchasers . 15 once developers have signed on with the humble store they are given a widget that they can include on their web site which allows users to purchase the game the humble store was usually inaccessible unless one directly searched for the widget for a particular game . in some cases such as with ftl faster than light and sportsfriends the developers used the humble store to provide tier rewards during their crowd funding phase using sites like kickstarter . 15 as with the bundles once purchased the buyer has access to all software titles from the store at any time . ben kuchera of penny arcade reports compares the humble store as a potential competitor to virtual storefronts like steam offering a more personable level of service to developers and customers than these larger systems . 15 in july 2016 humble bundle created its gamepages service that offered developers that are already using the widget dedicated website space to allow them to sell and advertise their game avoiding the need to secure this website space on their own . 16 a dedicated humble store was launched in november 2013 where single games instead of bundles were put on daily sales with 10 % of the revenues being given to charities including the eff american red cross and child s play . 17 a new section for ebooks audiobooks and digital comics launched alongside the games store on may 15 2014 . 18 as of may 2016 the humble store has raised over four million dollars for the various charities it supports . 19 humble weekly bundles edit humble weekly bundle logo following the conclusion of the humble android bundle 5 in march 2013 the site announced new weekly sales that feature the same pay what you want for a single title starting with the game bastion . as with the regular bundles each weekly sale has several tiered payment options . aside from only lasting one week instead of two running consecutively with main bundles and being based on a singular theme often a particular developer s games the sales work exactly like the bundles . 20 humble flash bundles edit another extension of humble bundles the first flash bundle debuted on july 14 2014 . taking cues from the two week humble daily bundle promotion humble flash bundles are similar to weekly sales but only last for 24 hours and may include repeats of previous bundles and sales . humble monthly edit further information list of humble bundles humble monthly bundle in october 2015 humble bundle launched its humble monthly subscription service ; those that subscribed would receive a curated set of games at the start of each month delivered in a similar manner as other humble products such as with steam key redemption or drm free copies . five percent of the subscription fees go to charity . bowling compared the idea to a book club allowing them to curate the monthly bundles on themes or complementary ideas . bowling also stated that this can be a larger incentive towards developers into participating in this program since revenue for games can be better estimated based on the number of subscribers compared to their normal pay what you want pricing scheme . 21 humble bundle co founder john graham stated that while initial subscription numbers were low due to potential subscribers being unaware of what type of games were offered that by february 2016 they have reached more than 70 000 subscribers to the service . at this level humble bundle is able to use some of the money to fund the development of new games humble originals for those subscribers in future humble monthlies ; the first such humble original was elephant in the room developed by mighty rabbit studios released with the february 2016 monthly bundle . 22 23 humble bundles edit further information list of humble bundles since its inception the humble indie bundle offerings are typically a two week period where between three and five games are offered at a pay what you want model . most bundles have featured added bonuses that are announced mid way through the period as added incentive for purchasing the games ; previous purchases automatically receive these bonuses after humble indie bundle 9 these midway bonuses were made exclusive to above average buyers . more recent bundles have included a beat the average bonus should the purchaser contribute more than the current average price others have performed . other bundles have featured game soundtracks as either part of the core bundle or as an extra reward . with the drm free nature of the offered games the source code for several games has also been included as part of the bundle s offerings . the purchaser is able to name any price for the bundle . the humble bundle website interface gives users the chance to determine how to distribute their contribution defaulting to a specific split between the developers the charities for that event and a humble tip which is used to cover hosting and other costs of the bundle . the purchasers can choose to give all or none to any of these groups or any combination of these . in later bundles purchasers can also buy the bundle as a gift for others . games are typically available as standalone clients for microsoft windows mac os x and linux based systems ; in many cases the bundles represent the debut of a game on the latter two platforms . the purchaser can often also obtain redeemable codes for the games on services like steam or less often desura or origin . to avoid abuse