Initial bundles were typically collections of independently developed games featuring multi-platform support (including Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms) provided without digital rights management (DRM).

Wolfire had also recently teamed with Unknown Worlds Entertainment to offer a bundle based on their Natural Selection 2 game.

With his close ties to these independent developers, as well as Ron Carmel of 2D Boy, Rosen was able to assemble the package, taking advantage of merchant sales systems offered by PayPal, Amazon Payments, and Google Checkout to minimize the cost of transactions and distribution.

[9] The means of "pay-what-you-want" would allow purchasers to simply give the money to the charities, but Rosen felt this was not an issue and would "consider that a success" of the sale.

[9] Rosen and Wolfire employee John Graham provided technical support during the sales, handling thousands of requests through a few all-night email and chat sessions.

According to the company, Humble Bundle was to continue to operate as a separate entity within IGN, with no plans to change its current business approach in the short term.

Rosen stated that they felt that Humble Bundle had gotten to a point where it was stable with many potential growth opportunities, but beyond his or Graham's mindset of establishing startups.

[35] However, after criticism from both developers and users of the store, Humble said in May 2021 they would reverse this decision and retain these sliders, including the ability to pay fully to charity, as part of their overall site redesign.

It offers the capabilities of the payment and customer services that they had created for the various Bundles to independent developers as an alternate marketplace for these games.

According to Joshua Knoles of the Humble Bundle team, they "wanted to create something that would allow developers to easily sell their games through their own web site as well as provide a painless buying experience for purchasers".

In some cases, such as with FTL: Faster Than Light and Sportsfriends, the developers used the Humble Store to provide tier rewards during their crowd funding phase using sites like Kickstarter.

Ben Kuchera of "Penny Arcade Reports" compares the Humble Store as a potential competitor to virtual storefronts like Steam, offering a more personable level of service to developers and customers than these larger systems.

[39] A dedicated Humble Store was launched in November 2013, where single games instead of bundles were put on daily sales, with 10% of the revenues being given to charities including the EFF, American Red Cross, and Child's Play.

[44] Following the conclusion of the Humble Android Bundle 5 in March 2013, the site announced new weekly sales that feature the same pay-what-you-want for a single title, starting with the game Bastion.

Bowling also stated that this can be a larger incentive towards developers into participating in this program since revenue for games can be better estimated based on the number of subscribers compared to their normal "pay what you want" pricing scheme.

[52] However due to this shift, Humble would no longer be able to support Mac or Linux versions of the Trove games since the launcher would be required to access them.

[53] With the change to the Trove, the discounts on the store also updated to a cumulative form, existing subscribers receiving the maximum level.

[61][62] Steve Horowitz, president of parent company Ziff Davis, told staff it had tried to sell Humble Games on two occasions, citing long delays and rising costs, before deciding on layoffs.

[70] Forbes listed John Graham in its 2013 "30 Under 30" leaders in the field of games for the success of Humble Bundle,[71] while Rosen was recognized for the same in 2015.

While Hitbox Team only received $178,000 out of the $2 million Humble Bundle made, the increased number of players caused daily sales of the game to jump from less than a dozen to around 50–60 copies per day.

[76] On the other hand, Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy developer Edmund McMillen noted in a tumblr post that the bundles are "not as successful as many would think."

[78] Rosen comments that there may be legitimate reasons for those who appear to be pirating the game, including the inability to use the payment methods provided or that they had made a single large donation for multiple copies.

[78] Wolfire Games did take action to stop predatory sites, such as the closely named "wollfire.com", from selling illegal copies of the bundle.

[79] While aware of the presumed software piracy, Rosen says that Wolfire will take no steps to limit it, believing that "making the download experience worse for generous contributors in the name of punishing pirates doesn't really fit with the spirit of the bundle".

[80] Rosen noted that by offering the source code of the games as an incentive, they would hope that "the community will help build them up with the same vigor that crackers tear DRM down".

[65] In preparing for the second Humble Indie Bundle sale, John Graham acknowledged that some may still download the game through illegal means, but also said that the organizers of the bundle gave their best effort to make the process of purchasing the games simple, and they also wished to create a social impact with the sales by including contributions to Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

[81] An anonymous survey conducted by Wolfire for those who felt it necessary to acquire the second Bundle from other illegitimate sources showed that some preferred the option of using peer-to-peer sharing services like BitTorrent to improve the speed and reliability of the download; as a result, Wolfire added the option to download the games through BitTorrent, hoping to entice more people to acquire the game legitimately.

iCoder claims they have the right to recreate and charge for the game under the GNU license, but Jeffery Rosen notes that this did not apply to the art assets.

Zubov recalls that he had heard "nothing back" until they made a "last minute decision" to include Steel Storm: Burning Retribution in the Humble Indie Bundle 3.

[102] Kyle Orland of Ars Technica[103] and Ben Kuchera[95] were critical of the THQ Bundle's inclusion of games limited to Windows and containing DRM.