Humble Bundle Gets Political: New Bundle Proceeds Fight Donald Trump’s Ban
The Humble Bundle is a great way to get excellent games at a low price all while supporting various charitable organizations, and the proceeds from the Freedom Bundle are going to benefit organizations fighting Donald Trump’s immigration ban.
The Freedom Bundle features a large number of indie games for only $30 minimum, and considering the sheer quantity of games included in the pack, this is a really good buy. Three of the more popular games included are Subnautica, The Witness, and Stardew Valley. These three alone are easily worth the price, not counting the more than 40 other games in the Humble Bundle. The estimated value for the Freedom Bundle is at $600, no doubt based primarily off the actual individual prices for the games sans sales or discounts.
The games will be available to download on the Steam digital distribution platform for Windows. In addition to the games offered, there are a decent number of e-books included as well. One of these, Cory Doctorow’s Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, is in audiobook format (MP3 or FLAC) and read by none other than Wil Wheaton.
There are three charities being supported with the Freedom Bundle, the ACLU, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Rescue Committee. Better yet, gamers who purchase this Humble Bundle can choose which of the charities the money goes to, which is great for those with particular political affiliations which might not want that money going to one or the other.
This is one of the few times Humble Bundle has gotten significantly political with one of its sales. The organization has made it quite clear their reasoning for getting involved at this time.
According to Techcrunch, the Humble Bundle company stated “We humbly remember that the United States is a nation of immigrants, and we proudly stand with developers, authors, and charities that champion liberty and justice for all.”
Humble Bundle founder Jeffry Rosen told Polygon “The Humble Freedom Bundle was a joint idea from our employees and a number of game developers, including Double Fine and Wolfire Games. As we started to contact game developers about the idea, it was clear that this bundle was very important to many people and something that needed to happen. We humbly united lots of people with similar feelings. We decided to donate $300,000 of our own funds when we saw the magnitude of games that developers were donating.”
Rosen also explained why the ACLU was included as one of the Humble Bundle charities. Wired reports “We stand together in dismay over Trump’s recent immigration ban… We find it to be un-American and damaging to global businesses like ours.”
It is quite clear that many game development companies, especially indie studios, oppose Donald Trump’s immigration ban.
So far Humble Bundle has raised more than just the $300,000 previously mentioned. In addition to their own contribution, as of right now, the sales for the Humble Freedom Bundle have reached over $3.1 million. And that number is consistently ticking up. More impressively yet, the sale is only one week long, and still has just under six days left to run. Over 97,000 Freedom Bundles have been sold thus far.
Humble Bundle has been raising money for charities since 2010, and was originally owned by one of the studios whose games have often been featured in the Bundles. The company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars, which has been been split between dozens of charities as well as the game developers themselves. The Freedom Bundle is the first politically motivated sale by the company aimed at Donald Trump’s immigration ban.
The Humble Freedom Bundle is currently live and will be running until 2 p.m. EST on February 20.
So what are your thoughts on the Humble Freedom Bundle and the political affiliations the company is espousing with their most recent sale?
[Featured Image Gerwin Sturm|Flickr| Cropped and Resized | CC BY-SA 2.0 ]
