humble-indie-bundle posts

The third Humble Bundle deal is now history and the efforts have once again been impressive for the "pay what you want" business model for selling games. The Humble Frozenbyte Bundle, which allowed people to purchase five games from developer Frozenbyte, brought in over $909,000 in about two weeks. While that's about half of what the second Humble Indie Bundle brought in last Christmas those funds were spread out over five different indie game developers.

Not all of that money is going to Frozenbyte; two charities (Child's Play and Electronic Frontier Foundation) will also get a cut as will the Humble Bundle organizers itself. It's currently unknown exactly how the money will be distributed since gamers could set their own levels of participation. The highest donation came at the last minute of the bundle; an anonymous gamer paid $2,222.22 for the games.

With just 24 more hours to go, the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle has now received over $870,000 in its latest "play what you want" indie game sales event. While the amount will be far below the $1.8 million raised by the second Humble Indie Bundle last Christmas, you have to remember that the revenues for this third bundle will be going to just one game developer, Frozenbyte, for sales of its five game titles.

As we reported last weekend, the organizers of the Humble Bundle have now raised over $4.7 million in venture capital funds. However the organizers have yet to officially comment on this development and what it means for future events like this.

The "pay what you want" business model for selling game has gotten the interest of venture capital companies. The Fortune web site reports that according to a recent regulatory filing, the Humble Bundle team has received a whopping $4.7 million in such funding. The team, John Graham and Jeff Rosen, have yet to officially comment on the funding move.

So far the Humble Bundle team have launched three such "pay what you want" bundle sales for indie games, including the current Humble Frozenbyte Bundle that will end this Tuesday. The first two bundles went over $1 million in revenues and the current bundle has generated over $700,000 in sales. The fact that this kind of business is bringing in outside funding indicates that at least some people believe that offering such a business model can generate profits at some point for the organizer of such bundles.

With less than a week to go before the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle "pay what you want" sales event ends, developer Frozenbyte has added more extras to its five game bundle of new and older titles. The biggest addition is the free playable teaser demo of the upcoming platformer Splot. The full version will be released later this year for all Humble Frozenbyte Bundle owners.

The source code for Frozenbyte's Shadowgrounds and Shadowgrounds Survivor games has also been released. Finally the level editor for the puzzle-action game Trine has been made available. So far the bundle has generated over $720,000 in revenue for the five games involved along with the two charities (Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play) and a tip for the Humble Bundle organizers with over 4 days to go.

The Humble Frozenbyte Bundle continues to chug along as five games from developer Frozenbyte are now available on the "pay what you want" business model for the next 12 days. So far there have been over 100,00 sales of the bundle and well over $525,000 in revenue generated.

Frozenbyte have announced that buyers of the bundle can now also download three music tracks from the soundtrack to one of its upcoming games that's not a part of the bundle, Trine 2. In addition one of the games in the bundle, the prototype Jack Claw, now supports keyboard and mouse controls in addition to the Xbox 360 controller. Frozenbyte says they plan to put in a few more small updates and extras in the bundle before it's over.

The first two Humble Indie Bundle events generated well over $1 million in revenues each time for the select group of indie games via the "pay what you want" business model. Now that same group is launching a third such effort but this one is a bit different. All five games will be from the same developer Frozenbyte.

Yes, Frozenbyte is offering five of its games via the "pay what you want" model for a limited time. The games include the two titles in the Shadowgrounds sci-fi top down shooter series (both now have new Mac and Linux ports for this deal) as well as Trine, the fantasy platformer-puzzle game (that game now has a Linux port). All three games also come with their music soundtracks.

But that's not all. Paying for the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle also gives the customer access to two more previously unreleased games. One is Jack Claw, a top-down action game prototype (Windows only) that features the player controlling a character with a giant whip in an urban setting. The source code for the game is included. The other title is Splot, a game that hasn't even been released yet but will be given to anyone who purchases the bundle once it's ready. We don't have any idea about what the game is like but the concept art looks ... interesting.

The Humble Frozenbyte Bundle should be live by the time you read this and will last for at least 14 days. By default, any purchases of the bundle will also benefit two charities, Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. You can check out a trailer (with goofy narration) for the bundle after the jump.

Update: In just its first hour the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle has already generated about $58,000 in revenue.

The second incarnation of the Humble Indie Bundle is now over and, thanks in part to the organizers extending the deadline by five days, the latest "pay what you want" indie game bundle brought in $1,815,934.53 in revenues for the five indie games (Braid, Machinarium, Osmos, Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans) plus two charities (Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play). The six games from the first Humble Indie Bundle were added later in the week if people donated more than the average per-person amount.

More detailed financial stats will be revealed later but the average per donation was $7.80 with Windows users averaging $6.63, Mac users averaging $9.25 and Linux users donating an average of $13.75. The largest single donation was made by an anonymous bidder who gave $5,555.

Update: There's been some updates to the site since we posted. The final revenue number is now $1,822,482.80. Plus a person calling himself "Nexus Scorpion" is the new number one contributor with $6,132.96.

The Humble Indie Bundle 2 (now with all of the games from the first bundle) has a new supporter. It's the PC streaming game service OnLive. The service donated 100,000 keys for two games from the first bundle, Braid and World of Goo that can be used by Humble Indie Bundle users who get those games with their donations. Furthermore, OnLive has become the single largest contributor to Humble Indie Bundle 2 with a $5,000 donation.

In related news, donations should be above the $1.6 million mark by the time of this news post. If Humble Indie Bundle 2 goes over the $1.75 million mark by its end (6 pm Eastern time Christmas Day) the developers of one of the games, Revenge of the Titans, have pledged to turn the game into an open source product.

The team at the Humble Indie Bundle have been generating a lot of money already with the second batch of games with its 'pay what you want" business model. But now the team has upped the anty. The Humble Indie Bundle 2 now includes all of the games from the first Humble Indie Bundle.

Yes, you can get all of the bundle's current games (Braid, Machinarium, Osmos, Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans) plus all of the game's in the original bundle (World of Goo, Gish, Aquaria, Penumbra Overture, and Lugaru HD plus the freebie Samorset 2). People who have bought Bundle 2 can download the Bundle 1 games now. People who have yet to purchase Bundle 2 can get the Bundle 1 games if they pay more than the current average which is currently $7.35. Paying $7.35 to get a whopping 10 great indie games (plus one freebie) is still a massive bargain.

Just when you think things are going to be dull this week, news wise, along comes the nice gift of the StarCraft II demo. It would have been even nicer if we had gotten it closer to the late July release date but we will take what we can get:

• Steam has a new update for Star Ruler for download.
• Steam also has an update (for Europeans only) for Emergency 2012.
• The Humble Indie Bundle 2, now with over $1.3 million in revenues, has now surpassed the revenues generated by the original.
• Heroes of Newerth is getting a new "hero" on Wednesday; the vampire-like Dampeer.
• The fourth chapter of Bleedout, the episodic expansion for CrimeCraft, will be released on Christmas Day and will be free for anyone to download for the next week.