Like pretty much every other aspect of American society, gaming is in serious flux at the moment, as corporations and creators alike struggle to express their feelings on the Black Lives Matter movement, and the protests that continue to fill city streets across the nation. Call Of Duty and Apex Legends players have been greeted with log-in screens supporting the cause, long-standing conversations about representation both in- and out-of-game have been reignited, and charity streams, projects, and more are filling the medium’s virtual airwaves.
All of which kind of just got blown out of the water by Itch.io’s Bundle For Racial Justice And Equality, a collection of 742 games—not a typo, seven-hundred-and-forty-two—that can be had for a donation as low as $5. Not that that’s really what you should pay, mind you, since all money brought in by the sale (currently at $570,000 and counting) will go, in a 50/50 split, toward the NAACP Legal Defense And Education Fund and the Community Bail Fund.
Even if you only take the games that have had a Steam release and some fame and popularity of their own—stuff like A Short Hike, Night In The Woods, Minit, Overland, Oxenfree, Super Hexagon, and more—you’d be getting more than your money’s worth, even if you were paying ten times more than the $5 minimum donation. (Which, to be clear, you totally should, if it’s in your means.) But even beyond that, the sheer number of projects on display here—queer dating sims, silly joke games, single-page RPGs, ambitiously weird game jam ideas, and literally hundreds of others—could keep you amused and fascinated for years to come. “Value” isn’t really the point when it comes to a charity project, of course, but this is still an absolutely staggering amount of content—to say nothing of all the exposure to new, weird, progressive ideas and creatorsthat comes with it—to get in exchange for giving money to a good cause. If you have any interest in games, of pretty much any kind, it’s essentially a no-brainer, a win-win of the purest sort.
Looking for ways to advocate for Black lives? Check out this list of resources by our sister site Lifehacker for ways to get involved.