The latest Humble Indie Bundle sees the likes of Twisted Shadow Planet, Risk of Rain, and Tower of Guns making their debut on Linux. This isn’t solely down to the games developers, it’s with the help of Humble’s in-house Linux porter and a couple of contractors that this can happen.
Since Humble started its bid to take over the bundle world they’ve managed to port more than 100 games over to the open source operating system.
From the beginning Humble have pushed to see more games released on the Linux operating system, often convincing developers to port their games from Windows or Mac so more players can play them. Taken a bundle at a time – two games here, three games there – it doesn’t sound like that many but clearly those numbers have been adding up.
“Before including a game in a Humble Indie Bundle we make many considerations: is the game cross-platform? Is it DRM-free? If a game isn’t quite there but could use an extra helping hand, we step in and make it happen,” write the Humble team. “Humble Bundle works with numerous porters to help bring games over to Mac, Linux, Android and now to the Web with asm.js. Porting isn’t easy, either. It takes time, money and skilled individuals to get games up and running on other systems. The vast majority of games we help port are from indie developers who may not have the resources necessary to do the ports themselves.
“With products like the Steam Machine on the horizon, the demand of having games available on multiple platforms becomes more important every day.”
Interestingly, Humble also revealed that when it comes to donations, Linux supporters are more generous than both Mac and PC. “Over the lifetime of Humble Bundle our Linux users pay $1 more than the average Mac user and $2.60 more than the average Windows user,” Humble write.
You can check out the latest Humble Bundle over on their site.