Summer Games Done Quick, a speedrunning marathon for charity, raised over $3,000,000 for Doctors Without Borders over the past week. This is the first time that any Games Done Quick event has broken the $3,000,000 threshold.
Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ) kicked off last Sunday with a speedrun of Spyro Reignited Trilogy: Spyro The Dragon. Throughout the week, players showed off their skills across some of the most popular titles in the industry, such as Super Mario Bros. 2, Devil May Cry, Metroid, and Super Mario Sunshine. All told, over 130 different events took place throughout the week.
The organization crossed the coveted $3,000,000 mark during a playthrough of Chrono Trigger; the last game on the schedule. It certainly was a fitting end to such an exciting week.
Fans in the audience starting going wild as they approached the record. Even puwexil, the Chrono Trigger streamer, was excited enough to break focus for a split second and start cheering.
As of now, SGDQ is sitting at $3,006,223.87 raised, with an average donation of $59.05. This could change over the next few days as donations continue to pour in.
Last year's event was also a record breaker, raising $2.1 million, with $1 million coming in the final day of the marathon.
It's great to see the charity organization picking up steam over the past few years. Not only are they refining their delivery method and becoming a more polished stream, but they are also benefiting from the growth of esports and streaming platforms as a whole. In fact, the game streaming industry was worth over $10.1 billion back in 2018, and it's expected to grow by $3 billion over the course of 2019.
That growth also means competition. There are other charity streaming organizations, such as Extra Life, as well as individual streamers that donate their earnings, that may compete with SGDQ. Whether or not these will steal viewers away from each other remains to be seen, however as of now that doesn't appear to be the case. The more charity streams the better, as it grows the genre and brings more awareness to the activity. Plus, most streams don't overlap each other, so gamers are free to patronize them all.
Let's hope the record-breaking streak continues in 2020.