Creating the Queer Games Bundle to build a more resilient queer dev community
If you go to the front page of itch.io the first thing you'll see, above a curated list of games on its own summer sale, is the Queer Games Bundle 2022. Currently sitting at over $65,000 raised, the pay-what-you-will bundle (primarily giving buyers the options of $10 or $60) is composed of over 500 video games, tabletop games, zines, and other art by queer creators. At the end of the month-long period, the profits raised from the bundle are divided among the artists.
Many of these games are tiny in scope and file size, made by one person with a day job or a small studio, but for the price of (up to) $60 you can access a treasure trove of unabashedly queer art. More, importantly, the cash helps support hundreds of queer artists, which is why organizers Taylor McCue and Nilson Carroll started it in the first place.
The first Queer Games Bundle was organized in June 2021 by the developers that make up two thirds of swampbabes.org, a non-profit for queer digital artists. Both Carroll and McCue had participated in bundles before and the developers named the Black Lives Matter Bundle, Kritiqal's Anti-CyberPunk, and Indiepocalypse as major inspirations for creating the Queer Games Bundle.
"There was a huge want and need to make Pride Month directly helpful to regular queer folks," Carroll said when asked why he began the endeavor. "We're explicitly anti-rainbow capitalism and see this as a small step away from that trend."
One of the hardest parts of organizing a bundle of this magnitude is communicating with all the creators involved. According to McCue, a single record keeping mistake could have cost people involved hundreds of dollars in lost income. Years spent grinding in RPGs were a contributing factor to the inhuman amount
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