As June approaches, so does Pride. For us queers that grew up with video games, that also means turning our attention to an initiative that has gained traction over the past few years: the Queer Games Bundle.
Now entering its fourth year, this collaborative effort aims to support queer indie art, and offer support to queer game developers in a way that exists outside, and as a rejection of, the mainstream complex. All queer creators or majority queer teams are welcome to join with games, tabletop games, books, music, and more. The project welcomes submissions of any gay media for itch.io if it meets the requirements. They’ll evenly distribute all proceeds generated from the sales among the contributors, ensuring that queer creators receive fair compensation for their work. You can find more info on the submissions page.
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It’s already a great deal for developers, but it’s a fantastic deal for consumers. In the past, these bundles were priced at $60, the bundle also offered a smaller “Pay What You Can” edition ranging from $10 to $20 and above. In 2022, the bundle featured a staggering 583 games, and raised $114,704.24 for queer creators.
This year’s bundle is looking great
This year’s bundle is already looking like a must-get both in terms of quantity and quality. There’s a wide variety of huge and interesting projects already in the 400+ submissions, including the fantasy survival narrative Fostering Apocalypse, wild team-based fighting game Heatwave, and the dark horror of The Gardener.
The founders of the initiative are Taylor McCue, the creator of the challenging trauma dissertation He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me, and Nilson Carroll, a prolific experimental glitch/game hacking artist. However, this year, Caroline Delbert (writer and contributing editor at Popular Mechanics) is stepping into the leadership role of the bundle.
Sources: itch.io
