Charitable gaming company Humble Bundle has launched the Star Wars Humble Bundle III, where you can download PC versions of selected Star Wars games for a fraction of their normal price, while also helping a great cause.
Humble Bundle lets you ‘pay what you want’ for content, within limits, and choose where your money goes – between Humble Bundle, the game publisher and charities. In practice though, what you pay dictates what you get. £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 – which come in the form of download codes – in your bundle.
With this bundle, until 7pm on Tue 21 Feb, if you pay £1ish you’ll get about £26-worth of games, pay £8.70ish and you’ll get about £59-worth of games and £11ish will get you about £115-worth of games.
What games are included?
The Star Wars Humble Bundle features a collection of PC games available on Steam for Windows – more on that below. Some are also available on Mac and Linux too.
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, PayPal or Amazon Payments.
There are four payment tiers…
– TIER 1: Basic minimum cost $1 (about 80p) – though you can give more. Games include Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance, Star Wars: X-Wing vs TIE Fighter – Balance of Power Campaigns and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds Saga. These games normally have a combined cost of £25.76 on Steam.
– TIER 2: If you pay more than the average – currently $10.85 (about £8.70). Then it unlocks six more games: Star Wars Battlefront II, Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Star Wars Starfighter, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Star Wars: Rebel Assault I and Star Wars: Rebel Assault II. 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 £32.75.
– TIER 3: Pay a fixed $14 (about £11) or more. This will add five more titles to your collection: Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D, Star Wars Shadows of the Empire and Star Wars Empire At War: Gold Pack. These games normally have a combined cost of £56.75 – taking the total value of all game downloads you now have to £115.26.
– TIER 4: Pay a fixed $35 (about £28) or more. This will get you an exclusive Star Wars t-shirt only available via this bundle, in addition to the 15 games listed above.
Since its release on Tue 7 Feb, the Star Wars Humble Bundle III has been bought over 44,230 times.
How do I get the bundle?
1. Before purchasing, check the system requirements you need to run the games.
2. If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to create a Steam account and install it.
3. Create a Humble Bundle account and make your purchase, choosing the amount you want to pay and how it’s split between Disney, 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 codes on Steam. See detailed Steam instructions.
What is Humble Bundle?
Through the support of its community, Humble Bundle’s raised over $80 million (£65m) 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.
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).
When you pay, you choose how your payment is split between Humble Bundle, the game publisher (which in this case is Disney), and charities (in this case the U.S. Fund for UNICEF).
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.
Anything else I need to know?
– Some of the games are only suitable for players aged 16 years and over, so be aware if you’re buying for kids. You can check ratings on Steam.
– 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, which is what we’ve been charged in the past. 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 so might take hours to download depending on your internet connection speed.
– We used normal Steam prices to value these games. While it isn’t always the cheapest place 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.
