Itch.io company founder Leaf Corcoran has revealed that over 1.5 billion Itch.io games have been downloaded through bundles to date.
If you're into indie gaming, you're probably familiar with Itch.io. It features all of the things that you'd expect from a digital game distributor -- an online storefront, tons of sales and bundles, and even its own desktop client. Now, the company's founder has revealed the wild popularity of bundles on the platform.
1,557,124,474 (that's 1.5 Billion) games have been obtained by people on @itchio from buying bundles 😱
— leaf @ itch.io 🙌 (@moonscript) March 11, 2022
That's 1 game for every 5 people on earth
The Power of Itch.Io Games Bundles
Leaf Corcoran revealed on Twitter that more than 1.5 billion Itch.io games were sold through bundles to date -- certainly an impressive number for an operation that has such a strong focus on indie games.
"1,557,124,474 (that's 1.5 Billion) games have been obtained by people on @itchio from buying bundles," Corcoran said in a tweet. "That's 1 game for every 5 people on earth[.]"
Part of the popularity likely has to do with the ease of developers creating bundles -- a feature that Valve only managed to release for Steam last summer. While individual game sales certainly contribute to a developer's bottom line, clever devs can work together to create bundles around a theme (or simply a good value) and help drive more sales for everyone involved.
A likely major driver of these Itch.io games sales, however, is its developer-created charity bundles. Bundles with hundreds of games were created to support racial justice and equality causes, Palestinian aid, and LGBTQ+ developers over the last two years.
These impressive numbers are going nowhere but up, especially with the latest major bundle release -- a total of 991 premium items (valued at over $6,500) are available in the Bundle for Ukraine, a charity bundle that aims to support the International Medical Corps and Voices for Children in the war-torn country. Even the tabletop community is getting in on the action with a bundle of its own: the TTRPG Community Stands with Ukraine Bundle.
Charity bundles aside, there are a ton of great bundles that you can get on this digital games storefront, You can check out all of the bundles available on Itch.io.
