Haiti – MMO Fallout

ah010810blizzard — Welcome to the tip of the mountain.

Make a wish, kids, because Blizzard just donated one million dollars to make your wish come true. Last year, Blizzard ran a two month long charity drive with a simple premise: Purchase a Pandaren Monk pet for $10 USD, and 50% of that purchase will go towards the Make-a-Wish foundation. Despite the usual complaints on the forums, over two hundred thousand of Blizzard’s subscribers pulled their wallets out and made a purchase during that time period.

Although 50% isn’t nearly as much of a percentage as I’d like to see companies (especially Blizzard) give from a non-tangible item that costs barely a couple hours to code into the game, given that the Pandaren wasn’t made for the charity, I think I can give it a pass. The sheer girth of the donation, combined with Blizzard being up front about how much they were donating, makes it an alright move in my books.

Meanwhile the PLEX for Haiti event ended last week on Eve Online, with more than forty thousand dollars being donated. In Eve Online, if players donated PLEX, it was converted directly into cash and sent to charity.

More on Blizzard, CCP, and Charity as it appears.

“On January 12th, 2010, a massive earthquake devastated the island nation of Haiti. In an effort to show support and lend aid, SOE will be offering items priced at 500SC on the Station Marketplace through EverQuest, EverQuest II, and Free Realms.

From January 15th to January 18th at 11:59pm PST, redeem 500 station cash towards the purchase of one of these items and SOE will contribute $10 (up to $25,000) to aid in the relief efforts being sent to Haiti.”

People often ask me, Omali, are you ever going to stop berating South Korean developer nDoors and their game Atlantica Online for exploiting a charity cause, one that coincidentally had record donations to its name this past year, for their own profit after half-lying about the paltry two dollars of the forty dollar item, that actually went to charity? Well that’s an oddly specific question, but the answer can be summed up simply: Not as long as other companies offer me the whip to beat this horse with.

If you play Everquest, you now have the opportunity to redeem 500 station points towards a plush bear, with $10 going towards the relief effort in Haiti. Likewise, Everquest 2 players may buy a 500 station point armor crate, with $10 going towards the relief effort in Haiti. And finally, Free Realms players can buy Zando the Red Trex for, you guessed it, 500 station points, with $10 going towards the relief effort in Haiti.

You have until tomorrow night to purchase any of these items. The items themselves only cost $5, meaning Sony is matching every donation with a donation of their own. Sony joins Popcap, who yesterday held a charity drive where 100% of the day’s sales went to charity.