Pay-What-You-Want Videogame Sale Rakes in Over $800,000 in 3 Days

It’s called the “Humble Indie Bundle 2” where people can pay what they want and have the money go to whoever they choose. The famous video game sale by Wolfire is back and already, the sale has become hugely successful.

Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes

Back in May, an independent videogame developer created the Humble Indie Bundle – a sale that allowed users to pay what they want to get a set of DRM-free videogames. they even allowed the users to choose where the money would go – to the developers, to charity or a mixture in between. While some in the industry would consider the sale crazy, the sale did manage to net over a quarter of a million dollars in 24 hours and closed at nearly $1,270,000. For an independent video-game producer, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

So what happened since then? It turns out, Wolfire launched the Humble Indie Bundle 2 three days ago and, already, the sale has earned well over $800,000 with four days left to go. The sale looks like it is on track to match its previous success already, but we don’t know for sure if it’ll beat the previous sale total.

The sale features Braid, Machinarium, Osmos, Cortex Command, and Revenge of the Titans. Like before, the games are platform independent. The charities involved are EFF and Child’s Play.

The video:

What I think is cool is the fact that this proves that the first sale wasn’t a one hit wonder. It’s back-to-back success is showing that such a business model is, indeed, viable.

Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.