In a weeklong streaming marathon, the community of fans that have formed aroundDestinyraised over half a million dollars for St. Jude Children’s Hospital.
It all started with an idea for a community convention. Popular Twitch streamers kmagic101,King Gothalion, and Professor Bromandecided after a massively successful meet-up ofDestinyfans last year, that they would put together a bigger event to celebrate the community that has formed aroundDestiny. That became Destiny Community Con 2016 (DCC 2016).
As a part of that, there would be a weeklong charity stream leading up to the event to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. After that stream concluded theDestinycommunity that rallied behind the event raised $503,815.99.
The original goal for the stream was half of that, just $250,000. That goal was met a little over halfway through the weeklong stream, but the streamers kept pushing on and donations kept coming in. The donations reached a fever pitch during the last day, where more than $100,000 were donated in just the last six hours of the stream.
Bungie and its employees even got involved during the last shift of the stream.Cozmo, one of the community managers at Bungiejoined Professor Broman on his shift of the stream to playDestinywith him while the other Bungie community manager, DeeJ, hopped on to help read out the donations that were pouring in. Bungie employees (includingCEO Pete Parsons) started donating as well, and Bungie’s own charitable arm, the Bungie Foundation, promised to double every donation made by a Bungie employee while Cozmo was on-stream.
It all came to a fever pitch in the last minute of the stream as the $500,000 mark was crossed. According to St. Jude, this is the largest amount raised by a gaming community for the hospital. The previous record had been $250,000.
The 7-day stream and theDestinycommunity’s efforts even picked up national news attention fromCNBC, who covered the event when it had raised about $317,000. DCC Event Director kmagic101, whose real name is Kevin Murray, told CNBC that theDestinycommunity is truly special:
“As gamers, we’ve never seen anything like it. The amount of respect and love in the community is mind-blowing. Lives have been changed and will continue to be changed because of it. Friendships, careers, marriages, et cetera. It’s all happened because of this game and this community.”
Beyond the charity stream, all the profits from DCC 2016 this weekend will also go to St. Jude. In addition, the organizers of the event say they have a special stream planned for Friday, August 26 as well, where any donations given during that stream will be also added to the total already collected. So while $500,000 is impressive it is not the final number that theDestinycommunity will likely have raised by the end of the weekend.
Bungie and Activision have no official part in DCC, as it is fully organized and run by fans themselves. Be sure to check outGame Rant’s full story about DCC 2016
Destiny: Rise of Iron, the game’s next expansion, is set to launch September 20 on PS4 and Xbox One.
