Twice a year, some of the world’s fastest gamers gather to play through their favorite games at a breakneck pace and raise money for charity. This year’s Summer Games Done Quick ran from July 26 to August 1 in St. Paul, Minnesota and by the end of the event, it had hit a major milestone.
Last year’s event raised a respectable $700,000 for charity, but this year the event organizers had a much bigger goal in mind: crossing the $1 million mark. By the time the event closed early on Sunday morning it had raised over $1.2 million.
The exact number was $1,232,441.90, raised across 28,466 donations, according to Games Done Quick’s donation tracker. This averages out to roughly $43 per donation, but there were a number of sizable individual donations — the largest was a massive $21,498.
The proceeds are going to Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), an international medical humanitarian organization operating in more than 70 countries. The organization received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.
A wide variety of games were run throughout the week-long event, ranging from classics like Super Metroid and The Legend of Zelda to more modern, offbeat games like Octodad: Dadliest Catch and Quantum Conundrum. Run times varied as well from super short runs of three minutes to five-hour marathons.
If you’ve never witnessed a Games Done Quick event and feel like you’re missing out, don’t worry, you won’t have to wait until next summer. SGDQ has a companion event, Awesome Games Done Quick, that runs in January of every year. Right now AGDQ still has SGDQ beat in terms of money raised — last year the event raised over $1.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
The entire Summer Games Done Quick event is archived on the Games Done Quick YouTube channel, so while you might be missing the thrill of watching live, you’ll still get to see all of the best moments, like the zero star Super Mario 64 run below.
