The first Humble Bundle—the Humble Indie Bundle—was released in 2010, and the growth of the company behind it has been nothing short of remarkable since then, with more bundles (lots of bundles), deals with major publishers, a monthly subscription service, and a full-blown digital storefront. Today it underwent a major change of a somewhat different kind, as it announced that it has been acquired by IGN.
"We chose IGN because they really understand our vision, share our passion for games, and believe in our mission to promote awesome digital content while helping charity," Humble Bundle co-founder Jeffrey Rosen said in the announcement. "I can’t think of a better partner than IGN to help Humble Bundle continue our quest."
Importantly for gamers, Humble will continue to operate pretty much as it always has. "You can expect it to be business as usual, but better. The Humble Bundle our audience knows and love will continue to operate independently from IGN, with our current amazing team," co-founder John Graham said in an email.
"IGN will support Humble Bundle with increased resources, allowing us to bring our community the best gaming bundles, book bundles, and store sales, while nurturing the Humble Monthly and our new publishing initiative, and donate more money to charity, more quickly than ever before."
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," IGN executive vice president Mitch Galbraith told Gamasutra. "The idea is just to feed them with the resources they need to keep doing what they're doing."
That's a good approach to take, and I hope it sticks, although it's not really clear to me what more Humble would need to achieve that goal: Alongside its own remarkable growth over the past seven years, it's also raised more than $100 million for charity—now $106 million, Graham said. "And we plan to donate even more money to charity than ever before now that we’re part of the IGN family."
