Humble Bundle raises more than $6.5M for charity

Humble Bundle’s recent charitable effort, the Humble Freedom Bundle, was a major success. The company announced yesterday that it sold more than 200,000 units of the package, which included several acclaimed games and books, with a final tally of $6.43 million going straight to organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union.

All proceeds of the weeklong sale will benefit the ACLU, Doctors Without Borders and the International Rescue Committee. Humble will also match $300,000 of customers’ dollars, adding onto the size of the donation.

This is a huge achievement for Humble Bundle, which regularly donates proceeds from its game packages to charities. The company launched the Freedom Bundle last week in response to recent, heavily criticized executive actions. These include, most prominently, a ban on travel and immigration that many saw as disturbingly discriminatory in nature. Nonprofits like the ACLU played a major part in overturning this order, referred to colloquially as the “Muslim ban.”

The Freedom Bundle differed from the typical “pay what you wish” Humble Bundle set in that it carried a $30 minimum price tag. For $30, however, buyers got more than 50 games and books, including The Witness, Stardew Valley and Song of the Deep.

The initial lineup grew following Humble Bundle’s release of the package, as other indie studios and developers wanted in on helping out some good causes. Sales passed $3 million just one day after the Humble Freedom Bundle became available, proving that the set had struck a chord with many fans of indie gaming.

“I'm blown away by the generosity of our developer partners and authors who donated their games and books, as well as the Humble Bundle community that paid the $6.43M,” company founder Jeffrey Rosen told Polygon of the Humble Freedom Bundle’s inspiring draw.