Fortnite has announced that they have raised over $70 million for humanitarian relief that will be going to Ukraine. These donations are taking place from March 20 until April 3 and Epic Games will be donating all of their proceeds from Fortnite.
Epic Games has been working to get the money sent to Ukraine as quickly as they possibly can. In fact, they have chosen to send the money over as they log the transactions and have chosen to not wait until the bank clears it. Epic said, “We’re not waiting for the actual funds to come in from our platform and payment partners, which can take a while depending on how the transaction was processed. As transactions are reported, we’ll log them and send the funds to the humanitarian relief organizations within days”.
In addition to Epic Games donating their proceeds, Microsoft has vowed to donate their proceeds from Fortnite as well. Currently, Microsoft likely receives a 30% platform fee from the game. The donations coming from this platform fee will likely be very large based on the popularity of Fortnite.
These funds are being distributed to UNICEF, Direct Relief, World Food Programme, and the UN Refugee Agency in order to support Ukraine as they deal with the ongoing war. These groups all work to fulfill different needs to those in Ukraine, such as food and water or any other type of emergency aid that is needed. Epic has also said that they expect to add a few more groups in the coming weeks to help distribute their funds.
These proceeds come after Fortnite announced their new building-free mode that has many people playing the game again. These funds will likely provide a big boost to Ukraine as they continue in the current war with Russia.