Wolfire games seems to be building on the experiment by 2D Boy when they allowed anyone to buy their World of Googame on Steam last October for any price. This time its a little bit different. Now anyone interested can not only choose how much to spend for five great multi-platform games, but the can also designate a portion of it to charity.

As of May 11, 2010, $1,133,409 has been spent by 123,874 contributors. They donated $350,588 to the charities included in the experiment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play Charity.

You might have noticed the title of the article mentions four games, but there are five in the bundle, World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, and Penumbra. What has happened is that because of the amount of money put forth by contributors, the game developers for four of the games have decided to release their games as open-source and a bonus game has been added to the bundle Samarost 2.

There are few important things people can learn from this experiment. First, Indie developers can get the compensation they deserve for their hard work by not setting a price on their games. Second, Indie developers can compete with the big game companies sales numbers just by allowing people to buy their game for what they want to pay. Third, adding the ability for customers to donate a portion of their purchase to charity will boost sales tremendously. Lastly, that the concept of setting a price floor for games is as good as history.