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Humble Bundle removes charity cap following backlash

Humble Bundle's decision to cap charity contributions on bundle purchases has been met with customer indignation and will not go forward.

Ozzie Mejia

May 5, 2021 10:55 AM

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Since its inception, Humble Bundle had allowed customers who bought from its various bundles the option to allocate their money towards developers, charity, and Humble itself as they saw fit. There were never any limitations until recently when Humble announced that it would institute a hard cap on how much users could put towards charity. That has not gone over well with Humble's customer base to the point that the Humble Bundle team has reversed coursed and announced that the cap is being removed.

Here's the announcement from the Humble Bundle website:

We recently announced our initial plan for redesigned bundle pages which would no longer include sliders that let customers fully control what percentage of their order went to Humble Bundle, charity and publishers/developers.

We've heard everyone loud and clear and apologize for the way these changes were rolled out. We are now taking a moment to pause, collect constructive feedback and be more transparent about the path forward.

Today, we'll be turning sliders back on for all customers on our bundle pages while we take more time to review feedback and consider sliders and the importance of customization for purchases on bundle pages in the long term.

Humble Bundle had originally announced its intention to cap charity donations at 15 percent, as part of a website redesign. The move was met with displeasure from the site's customer base, who criticized Humble for moving away from its original mission statement.

While everything is back to the way it was, it doesn't appear that Humble has put this issue entirely to bed. The announcement also states that the team will be exploring different approaches to sliders and how splits work. Part of that includes incorporating charity to other elements of the user experience, but whatever it is that caused Humble Bundle to make their cap decision in the first place is likely still a problem that the team will look to address at some point.

Humble Bundle has expanded tremendously since its debut, starting off as an independent entity before it was acquired by IGN owners Ziff Davis. It has gone from simple game bundles to bundles that also include digital books and software. It's expanded to a full storefront and even to a subscription service, all of which offer the option for charitable contributions to some degree. We'll continue to follow the Humble Bundle story and come back with the latest updates here at Shacknews. If you're interested in picking up the newest gaming bundles, stay up to date on the latest offers with our Weekend PC Download Deals feature every Friday.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?