Humble Bundle has always presented a win-win scenario for the buyer: a portion of every purchase goes to charity, and you get much more value for the money you spend (as opposed to buying every item in a bundle individually).
However, some changes are being made to the Humble Bundle purchase process that will likely significantly cut down on the website’s charity contributions.
Humble Bundle Swaps Its Price Sliders for Pre-Set Toggles
Starting in late May (says this official blog post), Humble Bundle will begin testing a new bundle page that replaces its price sliders with a list of price options and an Adjust Donation dropdown menu.
According to a preview image of the upcoming change, the new donation options in the dropdown include Default Donation and Extra to Charity—which set the donation amount to five percent and 15 percent of the purchase, respectively.
Sliders will be replaced by toggles with defined splits that clearly show what amount of your purchase will support Humble, publishers, and charity. (…) While we get ready to roll out this update in late May, you’ll notice that sliders aren’t available on bundle pages. This helps us understand customer behavior as we start to roll out the new design.
As such, 15 percent will be the maximum amount you can give to charity.
In the past, you could move the slider on the bundle pages to adjust the charity donation to 100 percent, if you wanted to. That option may be more commonly selected than we think, if Humble’s now putting its foot down on the cuts the store and publisher gets.
Humble did not explain why its making this change, but there is some speculation that it’s because IGN acquired Humble Bundle in 2017. That said, there doesn’t seem to be any concrete evidence that confirms or denies this rumor.
What Is Humble Bundle?
It’s hard to describe how Humble Bundle works better than the company itself: “Pay less to get fewer items, or pay extra to give more to publishers, Humble, and charity.”
Humble Bundle is a digital storefront that allows you to pick your price for collections of games and other software. Launched in 2010, Humble began by occasionally selling bundles of indie games with multi-platform support.
As time passed and Humble garnered more media attention, bundles became more frequent and got bigger. They expanded to include games from established developers and AAA publishers, game jam promotions, digital music, books, and comics.
Now, Humble consistently lines its storefront with individual game sales and bundles that offer huge savings.
How Will This Affect Humble Bundle Moving Forward?
Already, Humble Bundle is receiving heaps of backlash on social media, with next to no one jumping to the company’s defense. If you search the storefront’s name on Twitter, all the most liked and retweeted posts feature very negative opinions.
Will Humble Bundle will reverse this move because of the anger its caused, or stand its ground? Hard to tell. We think things may return to if Humble sees a significant drop in its sales following the change, but by then it may already be too late.