It isn’t just the people who play MMOs who know that small contributions add up: As part of their Child’s Play 2009 Winter Charity Drive, Sony Online Entertainment ended up raising a total of $20,000 – ten bucks at a time.
Back in January, we reported that World of Warcraft players had raised a combined $34.6k to fight blood cancer. As it turns out, it isn’t just Blizzard – or its fans – who are willing to put money where their hearts are.
Every time an EverQuest or EverQuest II player bought a certain Child’s Play in-game item off SOE’s official Station store, the company pledged to donate $10 to Child’s Play. Despite harsh economic conditions, at least two thousand gamers ponied up their hard-earned cash, and Sony delivered on its promise.
“The ability of our players to make a donation of this magnitude in these tough economic times is beyond anything we could have hoped for,” said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment.
Of course, seeing how the SOE Station store is ultimately meant for the company to have a chance to make money in its games via microtransactions, one can’t imagine them running a charity drive like this too often. “Give us X bucks, we’ll give someone else (4X)!” might be good PR, but maybe not the best business sense out there.
