Gamers Rally In Katrina Support

Online gamers who play the hugely popular Everquest 2 now have a new command line to donate to the Katrina relief effort. "/donate" was added to the games functionality in a bid to encourage its hundreds of thousands of users to donate money. Sony Online Entertainment, SOE, have also suspended the automatic billing of all its members who are in the effected areas until they next logon. The move comes so that those unable to cancel their subscriptions do not get billed. In a similar move, Bungie - the makers of Xbox's Halo 2, are also actively encouraging their subscribers to donate to the appeal.



What a great idea!

I came across a similar premise when I logged into my newsgroup access provider (Easynews.com) about 30 mins ago. I could donate gigabytes of bandwidth I'd already paid for at 25c/gig so I donated 40gb to the relief fund. Currently they are at $23,000 donated.

Making donation easy is the crucial factor in boosting donations. I remember I donated twice to the Tsunami appeal, first I sought out where to donate and did, and second when I came across the same Easynews setup I dontated further.

I applaud the videogame industry for their efforts here. Well done

[edit on 9-9-2005 by asala]

Its all very good doing a command line in EQ2, but the game is so resource intensive (there isnt a computer out there that can run it with setting s to the full yet), that entering that command and being taken out of the game window and loading up a browser would cause some issues there.

Good idea, but again, poorly planned and implemented. Should just have a link on the logon screen, not whilst the game is running....

[edit on 3/9/05 by stumason]