Sequoia leads $4.5 million in Humble Bundle

Ronny Kerr · May 17, 2011 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/1a7b

Distributor of digital game bundles lets consumers set price and donate to charity and developers

Sequoia Capital confirmed Monday its latest early-stage Internet investment in the U.S: Humble Bundle, a distributor of digital games.

Though neither the startup nor the venture capital firm has disclosed details of the round, an SEC filing from mid-April shows Humble Bundle as having secured a $4.5 million round. Besides the two co-founders, Sequoia partner Alfred Lin is listed as a director on the filing.

The company was formerly incubated by Y Combinator.

Humble Bundle, as its name suggests, offers a unique twist on digital game distribution.

First of all, you buy a “bundle” of games, instead of just a single title at a time. The latest bundle, if each game was bought separately, would cost around $50.

Secondly, Humble Bundle lets you set your own price for the entire bundle. Not only that, but you can choose exactly how you want your money divided amongst the game developers, charity foundations or the startup itself. (Hence, the name “humble,” which Humble Bundle hopes its consumers will be.)

The latest offering from the company, the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle, just closed a few days ago. Games included were Trine, Shadowgrounds and Splot, all developed by Frozenbyte. Charities consumers could support in the purchase were the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Child’s Play Charity.

Collectively, people paid $910,207.69 across 183,219 purchases, for an average purchase price of $4.97. Weirdly enough, the statistics also break down average purchase price across different platforms: Linux users paid an average of $11.82, Mac users averaged $6.42 and Windows users averaged $3.91.

Data also shows which platform brought in the most payments (Windows, followed by Linux, then Mac) as well as names of the top contributors.

Because Humble Bundle is pretty forward thinking (letting people set their own price? letting them send to money to charity and developers?), it comes as little surprise that all games purchased on the site are completely DRM-free. Once you’ve purchased a bundle, you can install the games as many times as you like.

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