Fortnite announced the second season of its third chapter on Monday, along with an announcement that all proceeds from the game between March 20 to April 3 will support humanitarian relief for Ukraine. Just 24 hours after the announcement, Epic revealed that the players had already helped raise $36 million.
The proceeds here include any purchase of V-Buck packs and any cosmetic items sold in-game. Additionally, Epic is also including revenue from in-store purchases for V-Bucks cards provided they’re redeemed in the next two weeks.
Xbox is also joining the party by donating all proceeds from Fortnite’s Xbox version for the next two weeks.
Epic also confirmed that it’d be donating the money as soon as possible and will not wait for actual funds to arrive from the different platforms or payment partners. Instead, Epic will transfer these funds to charities within days of the reported transaction.
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Fortnite’s Epic donation
The money donated will go to charities, including Direct Relief, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Food Program. More charities will be added in the weeks to come.
Fortnite, however, isn’t the only game to have raised money to help Ukrainians. Indie game store Itch.io also raised over 6$ million via its bundle for Ukraine charity package. The package was available starting March 7 and included nearly 1,000 games. All this, estimated to be around $6500, was sold for $10 and donated to the International Medical Corps and Voices of Children.
Many big tech companies have retaliated against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Other than the already pretty strict economic sanctions, Russia is also facing a massive brunt of technological sanctions from popular big tech companies like Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Google that have stopped their services in the country.
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