Humble Bundle funding creation of exclusive ‘Original’ titles

Charitable games bundle platform Humble is expanding into development of its own titles.

The platform, which began by offering pay-what-you-want collections of games and subsequently opened a dedicated store for standalone PC releases, now boasts over 70,000 subscribers for its Humble Monthly service, co-founder John Graham told Destructoid.

The deal allows players to sign up for a monthly package of random games. Past offerings have included Creative Assembly’s Alien Isolation, Mike Bithell’s Volume, Double Fine’s Broken Age and Acid Nerve’s Titan Souls.

Humble’s self-funded Humble Originals will be released first through the Humble Monthly packs, with some remaining exclusive to the platform and others being eventually made available through other avenues.

The first Original is Elephant in the Room (pictured) from Mighty Rabbit Studios, which was included as part of the February bundle.

"We can make meaningful deals with game developers to secure great content, we get to write our featured charity a $30,000-plus check and, because we can predict revenues fairly accurately, we’ve even started funding some small gaming projects, Humble Originals, that you won’t find anywhere else and that our subscribers will get to play first," Graham explained.

He also spoke briefly on the difficult curve the monthly service had faced in getting off the ground:

“Because consumers have to prepay for their monthly bundle without knowing what games lie in store, the first month had a bit of friction where some customer expectations diverged from what we were actually planning for our product.

"Now that Humble Monthly has been out for a few months and we can showcase the awesome content from past Monthly Bundles, we are hitting our stride and it’s become way easier to make customers comfortable."