Here's a rare one: a games story that's just good. A $10 bundle on itch.io, put together by Necrosoft Games and more than a hundred other developers, has raised over $200,000 for people who've been laid off in the games industry. Every cent goes to the workers, not the platform.
The maths runs in your favour. Ten dollars gets you 127 items - 107 of them games, the rest assets and soundtracks. Close to 15,000 people have chipped in so far, averaging nearer $14 each, which is how a tenner bundle sailed past $200,000 on the way to a $250,000 goal.
Where the money actually goes
The fund is run by United Videogame Workers-CWA (organised as CWA Local 9433), which reviews applications and sends the money straight to workers. Eligibility is US and Canada, for anyone laid off since January 2024. There are two tracks: requests under $1,000, and a second for $1,000 to $5,000 that's open to any developer in financial trouble, not only the freshly redundant. It covers the unglamorous, vital stuff - rent, food, healthcare.
Necrosoft's Brandon Sheffield has done this before. His 2022 Ukraine relief bundle on itch.io raised more than $6 million. This one's smaller, but the industry's had a brutal couple of years, and $200,000 spread across people making rent is not nothing.
The catch
There isn't much of one, beyond the deadline: the bundle closes on August 14, so if you've been meaning to grab it, grab it. You'll get a pile of indie games you'll probably never finish, and the money does something useful. As trades go, that's about as clean as it gets.
Comments · 0