The COVID-19 pandemic has ground the world to a halt in the last few weeks, shutting down borders and causing entire nations to go into quarantine. The gaming industry has been heavily impacted, with countless events being moved online as entire companies work from home.
Thankfully, plenty of people in the gaming world have come together to do what they can to help. Some of this has consisted of raising funds for others, such as the GDC Relief Fund raising money to help with relief for independent developers that are being affected, and some of this has been gaming companies doing what they can to help raise awareness and funds for the relief efforts in general.
Rockstar Games and COVID-19 Relief pic.twitter.com/9j6NrtcrFN
— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) April 1, 2020
Rockstar Games is here to do their part. They announced earlier today that they would be donating a portion of their revenue to relief efforts, focusing on the local communities and businesses by supporting the organizations that are there to help them.
“We love seeing players immersed in exploration of our virtual worlds and connecting with each other through them,” Rockstar wrote in their announcement on Twitter earlier today, which you can see above. “Small businesses have closed their doors, and communities who rely on government-provided support that they cannot access are struggling. The road ahead will be challenging, and we want to help where we can.”
To that end, Rockstar will be donating 5% of their revenue generated from purchases on their online games. This fundraiser will run from April 1st until the end of May, so two months all in all.
That means that 5% of all revenue generated from purchases in the online portions of Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online will be donated to their local COVID-19 relief efforts. As things progress, they intend to share more on the efforts they’re taking.
It’s certainly a great gesture, and given that both of those games have sizeable player bases, there’s a decent chance they’ll end up raising a considerable sum. It’s worth saying that 5% seems incredibly low, especially compared to other companies like Hinterlands who are donating 100% of their recent proceeds to COVID-19 relief.
Besides that, though, it’s also important to realize that 5% of these sales is still a great amount of money. Perhaps Rockstar Games could be doing more – even doubling that 5% wouldn’t be out of the question – but they’ll still be raising a good sum. More than anything, it’s nice to see microtransactions having a good impact for once.
