Itch's massive charity bundle raised over $6.3 million for Ukraine
The Bundle for Ukraine exceeded its first million in under a day.
Itch's Bundle for Ukraine, the latest in what's becoming an extremely welcome trend of massive charity bundles on the indie storefront, wrapped up today after raising over $6.3 million for charities supporting the people of Ukraine.
Organised by Necrosoft Games director Brandon Sheffield, the Bundle for Ukraine collected just shy of a thousand games (including, full disclosure, my own) for a tenner in support of two charities working in Ukraine during Russia's ongoing invasion: The International Medical Corps and Voices of Children.
The final number. Over $6.3m to split between @IMC_Worldwide and Voices of Children. I'll do a bigger thread tomorrow, but for now, thank you all for contributing to this amazing achievement, and may there soon be peace in Ukraine!!! https://t.co/DFmUzyzvEQ pic.twitter.com/3ZmoPOKUoPMarch 18, 2022
Sheffield originally gave the bundle a target of $100,000, which it crushed in less than an hour. After a day the bundle had raised over $1.6 million, finally settling at a tremendous $6,370,602.22 by the time it ended early this morning. That figure is in part down to the tremendous lineup of games featured—including not only stellar indie hits like Skatebird, Superhot, Minit, A Short Hike and Quadrilateral Cowboy, but literally hundreds of hidden gems from smaller creators. It would take an impossibly long time to work through everything on offer.
But it's also reassuring to see Itch continue to pull the indie scene together to do good. The Bundle for Ukraine follows a template laid out by the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, which raised over $8 million for legal defense funds supporting anti-racist, anti-police brutality protests that took place in the US and worldwide in 2020.