Summer Games Done Quick Raises $2.1 Million for Charity

Summer Games Done Quick is one of my favorite charity events of the year, and this year has been pretty fantastic. During these events, famous speedrunners – people who make a competition out of seeing who can beat a game the fastest – come together and publically perform their craft for our viewing pleasure, joking with friends while explaining the details of what they do and how they do it. It’s a real treasure, and watching the stream or the VoD’s they post afterwards is a great way to spend a lazy afternoon.

But as I mentioned, it’s a charity event, and all through the stream, they take donations from people and companies and give the money to one of the most worthy charities out there, Doctors Without Borders. It’s not atypical for streamers to raise over a million dollars at these events but this year they managed to set a record by raising a whopping 2.1 million dollars for charity, which is the largest sum ever earned by a Summer Games Done Quick run.

Setting records isn’t actually that unusual, however. The year before that they raised $1.7 million, and the year before that, $1.2 million. In fact, the very first Summer Games Done Quick only raised $21,000… which means that over the past seven years, there’s been a x100 increase in the number of donations! How’s that for cool?

Anyway, they do another run, Awesome Games Done Quick, at the start of each year. So far that’s still raised the most money so far, with the 2018 stream getting over $2.2 million USD in donations, but we got close. Hopefully next year, more gamers will come together and continue with our track record of beating old high scores.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to keep donating, but you can still enjoy the VOD’s right here, if you want to see some casual speedrunning action.