Are you in the UK? Do you enjoy warfare of the Modern variety via Xbox Live? This weekend, the more you play Cod Mewtwo online, the more money Activision will donate to charity.
On December 5th and 6th, industry giant Activision and UK specialty retailer GAME are joining forces for GAME For Good, a promotion aimed to get gamers logging into Xbox Live to blast some fools in Modern Warfare 2 in order to help children in war-torn environments.
For every gamer in the UK that spends time playing MW2 this weekend, Activision will donate money to the War Child Charity, up to £250,000 ($416,000). There aren’t any signups required, you don’t have to pay an entrance fee or register – as long as you’re a UK gamer playing MW2 online on one of the two dates, you’ll be clocking hours that count toward donations.
The War Child Charity, as described by the site, is “an international charity that protects children living in the world’s most dangerous war zones.” In other words, even if Modern Warfare 2 is a rip-roaring good time for grown-up gamers (at least judging by the conversations Jordan Deam and Spinwhiz have every morning about their escapades), actual modern warfare really, really isn’t.
Now, I know we have some diehard Activision-haters (and Microsoft-haters) in our audience (and be honest, you know who you are) who are ready to grab their torches and point out that since you need an Xbox Live Gold account to play online, this is clearly a ploy by MS and Activision to just drum up sales, but just calm down for a moment (and really, dial back the cynicism detector for once). Xbox Live Gold memberships are free all weekend, so even if you don’t have XBL Gold you can still get in on the charity action.
So there you go. Play a great game online this weekend, and a company donates money to an extremely worthy cause. Sounds good to me.
