If you’ve been following our Deals Hunters’ blogs in recent months, you’ll likely have heard of Humble Bundle.
If not, and you’re a PC gamer, now’s a great time to acquaint yourself with the charitable gaming company as you can get about £55-worth of games for £1ish, about £162-worth of games for £7ish, or over £230-worth of games for £12ish until 7pm on Tue 2 Aug – while also helping a great cause.
Through the support of its community, Humble Bundle’s raised over $70 million (£49m) for a wide range of international charities including Unicef, Diabetes UK, Parkinson’s UK, Amnesty International and GamesAid.
One of the main ways the US-based company raises money for charity is through sales of Humble Bundles, collections of digital games typically offered for a couple of weeks. The games available in these bundles vary, from classic titles to more modern releases, and from small budget games made by independent developers to blockbuster titles from major industry players such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and 2K Games.
Why do companies offer their games for inclusion in Humble Bundles? Simply put, they see it as a great way of growing their audience while also meeting charitable commitments (or more cynically we reckon, it’s good PR).
You choose how much you pay (and where it goes)
It lets you ‘pay what you want’ for content, within limits, and choose where your money goes. In practice though, what you pay dictates what you get – but it’s really cheap. £1ish is the minimum you can pay, but if you can afford to pay more, you’ll be doing more to help a good cause while increasing the number of games you get.
When you pay, you choose how your payment is split between Humble Bundle, the game publisher (which in this case is 2K Games), and charity (sometimes this is predetermined, but in this case you can choose one from a selection of 1,000s).
While your natural inclination might be to give your entire payment to charity, we think you’d also be wise to consider supporting Humble Bundle itself, as the cash will help enable it to continue the good work it’s doing organising these promotions. Likewise, game publishers big and small are more likely to partake in similar promotions in the future if there’s a financial incentive to do so.
What you can get right now
A current Humble Bundle promotion, the Humble 2K Bundle, features a collection of PC games, all of which are playable on Steam for Windows (some are also available on Mac and Linux).
The most important thing to understand is the number of games you get depends on what you’re willing to fork out. You’ll be charged in US dollars and can pay by debit/credit card or PayPal.
There are three tiers…
– TIER 1: Basic minimum cost $1 (about 76p) – though you can give more. Games include The Darkness II, Spec Ops: The Line and Duke Nukem Forever. These games normally have a combined cost of £54.97.
– TIER 2: If you pay more than the average – currently $8.98 (about £6.80). Then it unlocks seven more games: Sid Meier’s Civilization V, NBA 2K16, Mafia II Director’s Cut, Freedom Force, Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified and Railroad Tycoon 3. The average price is updated in real time and when you go to make your payment, you’ll be told what it is. These games normally have a combined cost of £106.93.
– TIER 3: Pay a fixed $15 (about £11.40) or more. This will add two more titles to your collection: Battleborn and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. These games normally have a combined cost of £69.98 – taking the total value of all 12 game downloads you now have to £231.88.
Since its release on Tue 19 Jul, the Humble 2K Bundle has been bought over 212,100 times.
You’ll need to install the correct software
The games come in the form of digital codes, so you have to download them. They’re only redeemable through Steam, a massively popular platform for playing games (there are over 125 million active accounts).
How do I do it?
1. Before purchasing, check the system requirements you need to run the games.
2. Ensure you have the correct software required to download and play the games. Create a Steam account and install Steam.
3. Create a Humble Bundle account and make your purchase, choosing the amount you want to pay and how it’s split between 2K Games, Humble Bundle and charity.
4. Within a few minutes you’ll receive a purchase confirmation email directing you to your game codes, which will be accessible from within your Humble Bundle account.
5. Redeem your code on Steam via the ‘+ Add a Game’ section (see detailed Steam instructions).
Anything else I need to know?
– NBA 2K16 and Railroad Tycoon 3 are suitable for players aged three years and above, Civilization V, Freedom Force and Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich for players aged 12 years and older, and Battleborn and The Bureau: XCOM Declassified for players 16 years-plus. The other games are rated 18, so be aware if you’re buying for kids. You can check ratings on classification body PEGI’s website.
– Most cards carry the usual 3%-ish foreign transaction charge (see our how much does your card charge? tool to make sure you use the card that charges you the least) but a $1 purchase is likely to cost no more than £1, though some debit cards may add £1.50 per transaction.
– Signing up to Humble Bundle and Steam is straightforward and once you’ve completed the initial set-up, making future Humble Bundle purchases takes just a few minutes. Some of the games have small file sizes and download quickly, while others are much larger and might take hours to download depending on your internet connection speed.
– We used normal Steam prices to value these games. While Steam isn’t always the cheapest places to buy PC games, the ‘pay what you want’ nature of this promotion means it’s great value whatever way you look at it.
Will you buy this Humble Bundle, or have you bought one before? We’d love to hear your stories in the comments below, on Twitter @MSE_Deals or on Facebook. If you’re more interested in console gaming, check out our PS4 deals and Xbox One deals pages.
