Overwatch is one of the most popular video games in the world right now, with over 40 million registered players.
Putting it in another way, that’s nearly twice the population of Australia playing a game that features a hamster in a giant wrecking ball as a playable character.
And as it turns out, the Overwatch fandom is also pretty good at banding together for a good charitable cause.
Back in May, Overwatch added its first ever paid skin for the much-loved (or much-hated depending on who you ask) healer hero, Mercy, and fans had two weeks to get their hands on it.
At US$15, the fairy pink skin wasn’t exactly cheap, but all that money was for a good cause: the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF).
There’s always excitement amongst the fandom whenever Overwatch unveils a new set of skins for its characters, but the Pink Mercy skin definitely struck a chord with many people.
In a new announcement from Blizzard, the Pink Mercy campaign raised over US$12 million for breast cancer research.
Combined with T-shirt sales and other fundraising events such as charity streams, that total swells to about US$12.7 million.
Thank you, heroes!
Together, we have raised over $12.7 million (USD) for @BCRFcure
? https://t.co/eQAZ8rKwKI pic.twitter.com/ASWzBuodfh
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) July 9, 2018
Doing a bit of napkin maths, that means roughly 850,000 lovely people bought that Pink Mercy skin over the course of two weeks.
While the World Health Organisation recently made ‘gaming disorder‘ an official mental health condition (which has opened a whole can of worms), the Pink Mercy campaign just proves that there’s plenty of good to come out of things of video games and that it may not be as detrimental to your health as some people would like you to believe.
Whether you support breast cancer research or just really like the look of the Pink Mercy skin, it’s just great to see how the campaign resonated with the passionate Overwatch fandom.
Now there’s a bit of a worry that this money could be skimmed by some scam breast cancer organisation, but don’t worry – the Breast Cancer Research Foundation ticks all the boxes.
Besides, I can’t imagine any charity wanting to risk the ire of a video game fandom as large as Overwatch‘s.