Last month, Epic Games announced that it was committing all of its proceeds made through Fortnite to humanitarian relief for people affected by the war in Ukraine. Microsoft also announced that it would be doing the same thing. A week after the announcement, Epic Games shared that they had raised over $70 million. The donations took place from March 20 to April 3. Today, Epic Games shared that together with the community and Xbox, $144 million was raised. This money will go to various humanitarian relief organizations including Direct Relief, UNICEF, World Food Programme, UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency, and World Central Kitchen.
This initiative comes at the start of season 2 for Chapter 3 of Fortnite. This new season added tanks and lot of new gameplay mechanics for players to utilize following the removal of building. At first, the removal of building was seemingly temporary but leaks revealed otherwise. Epic Games then announced a permanent game mode with no building called Fortnite Zero Build.
Following Epic’s announcement of the total raised, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer replied on Twitter “Really incredible to see how the gaming community can have impact beyond the playing of games. Thank you @FortniteGame for putting this together, inspiring to see the results.”
Epic Games and Microsoft are not the only ones in the video game industry showing their support for Ukraine. Developers and publishers have suspended game sales and other Ukrainian developers called on the industry for help. Recently, Humble Bundle announced that its “Stand with Ukraine Bundle” raised $20.7 million.