June is Pride Month and itch.io has released a bundle of 200 games to specifically boost the work of queer creators.
With the intent to help nurture “our diverse and queer arts community,” the Queer Games Bundle 2021 is available through the entire month of June. Proceeds from the bundle will be split evenly between all contributors.
What’s truly interesting about this bundle, is that it is geared towards awareness of independent creators, and points out the disparity between budgets of mainstream games and the scale at which indie developers work.
On the site’s page, the team behind this bundle had this to day: “If we had 1/3rd of the budget of an AAA game, we could give every solo developer a livable wage for a year and every single team a massive funding boost. Imagine what the developers and artists in this bundle could create a year from now if they weren’t worried about starving or how to pay their rent this month. Purchasing the Queer Games Bundle is a direct action that you can take right now to support queer people in a life changing way, and in exchange you get over 200 amazing, heartfelt, fun, and radical games.”
The bundle isn’t all completely video games though. It also includes tabletop RPGs, tools like blogging engine zonelets, or the Electric Zine Maker.
itch.io is an open marketplace for independent digital creators with a focus on independent video games. It’s a platform that enables anyone to sell the content they’ve created. Sellers are in charge of how it’s done: setting their prices, running sales, in control of individual page design. It’s never necessary to get votes, likes, or follows to get content approved, and sellers can make changes to how they distribute their work as frequently as they like.
itch.io became a talking subject during last month’s lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple when it was described as hosting “offensive and sexualized” content.
Currently, at the time of this writing, Queer Games Bundle 2021 has raised over $55,500 with an overall goal of $5M. The bundle is live for the next 29 days. In 2020, itch.io hosted the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality which featured over 1000 works from more than 840 creators. The bundle also had a goal of $5M and managed to raise over $8.1M when it ended June 16th, 2020.
Also listed on the bundle page is the “Pay What You Can Edition” which is aimed at those who cannot afford the $60 cost. Although if possible, itch.io says, “we encourage you to purchase the $60 version to support over 190 developers featured!”
All proceeds to be split evenly between all makers.
SOURCE: pcgamer.com (via itch.io)
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