On Sunday, developer Epic Games announced it’d be donating two weeks worth of Fortnite profits to aid Ukraine. The day after, it revealed it had raised $38M.
That’s an awful lot of money and, assuming Sunday was an average day, it means over $500M will go to support Ukraine. The money will be split between humanitarian organisations UNICEF, the World Food Programme, the UN Refugee Agency and Direct Relief.
It is possible that, since the third chapter of the online FPS’s second season has just kicked off, that total is higher than usual but it’s still set to raise an awful lot of cash. It’s also a sobering reminder of just how much Fortnite makes, dwarfing Grand Theft Auto Online’s estimated $2M+ a day. Xbox has also committed their Fortnite profits during this period, though Epic hasn’t stated whether it’s factored that into the total.
Fortnite is free to play but features cosmetic microtransactions including costumes, emotes. Being absurdly popular has given Epic Games the power (and funds) to to get some major properties involved in the game. So Fortnite players have been able to dress as Spider-Man, Rick from Rick and Morty and much, much more.
If you want to find out other developers have helped Ukraine and how you can help, click here.
