Image via AGDQ
All week long, the Awesome Games Done Quick marathon has been streaming speedruns to raise money for charity, but the last day was especially dramatic thanks to robots and a ton of last minute donations.
It was just after noon yesterday when AGDQ broke the $US1,000,000 ($1,333,550) mark. Over the next twelve hours, however, the group was able to more than double than number thanks to some a bunch of really intense speedruns and their generous spectators.
And that was our robot overlord, TASBot! Up next, we’re going to Lordran in Dark Souls III with BubblesDelFuego! #AGDQ2017 pic.twitter.com/Gk2o02jAdz
— Games Done Quick (@GamesDoneQuick) January 14, 2017
Last year’s winter AGDQ brought in only $US1.2 ($2) million by comparison, making last night’s conclusion a historic moment not just for the group but for the art of speedrunning in general, one of gaming’s more niche community’s that’s slowly been gaining more attention in recent years as its players continue to plumb the depths of what’s possible in games ranging from The Legend of Zelda to Dark Souls III.
And speaking of Dark Souls III, a speedrun of the game that was supposed to help conclude the marathon last night came with its own surprises when streamer BubblesDelFuego performing an any% run of the game had a terrible time trying to get an early boss who drops an important weapon to kill itself by hopping off a cliff.
We may have crashed, but we still landed that sick out of bounds! #AGDQ2017 pic.twitter.com/TUHvtw4xPA
— Games Done Quick (@GamesDoneQuick) January 14, 2017
As PCGamesN reported, that was only the start of BubblesDelFuego’s troubles. Later on during his run, the entire game crashed due to one of the game’s more obscure bugs,
“[T]here is a very specific spot within the Catacombs of Carthus which can actually crash the game and jeopardize the run when you are going out of bounds. Just as Bubbles comments on this kind of crucial point, Dark Souls 3 does its duty and crashes, causing everyone to quite rightly panic.”
Eventually the event’s crew were able to retrieve a save file and get Bubbles back up and running, allowing him to finish the game inside of an hour (the current record is 35:44). Afterwards he explained to the crowd how he himself is a cancer survivor, and it was one of AGDQ’s marathons that originally got him interested in speedrunning.
Awesome Games Done Quick just broke over $2,000,000 raised to help fight cancer! AMAZING!?
Join in for the finale: https://t.co/SrXgV5q6tS pic.twitter.com/com1DfV0kS
— Twitch (@Twitch) January 15, 2017
The night ended with a true pacifist run through Undertale, one of 2015’s standout games that has gained a cult following for the way it subverts traditional RPG tropes.
The run was completed by TGH in just a minute and change shy of his current world record. Toby Fox, the creator of the game, even donated $US10,000 ($13,336) himself during the run.
By the end of the event, the donation total was $US2,216,608.30 ($2,955,958), with 43,384 people contributing an average amount of $US51.09 ($68). All told, the marathon featured nearly 200 speedruns, all of which you can re-watch here.
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5 responses to “Awesome Games Done Quick Raises A Record Breaking $2.2 Million For Cancer Prevention”
Toby didn’t donate during the Undertale run, he donated during the run prior to it in order to try and get the character’s name to be Bepis. The other amazing thing about this year’s GDQ is that they have now raised over $10 million total.
Bloody impressive total from AGDQ this year. Hoping SGDQ get just as great a total
How much of that $2.2million is actually going to the charity?
100 percent. GDQ doesn’t get a single dollar.
wrong they use the donations to pay for the venue and this year alone the guy that puts on agdq took 130k from the donations to pay himself.
During the Super Metroid race, one of the couch crew got angry at spectators making the Waluigi noise and told them if they wanted to contribute to cancer prevention that they should go outside and walk in front of a moving bus.
He was promptly removed from the venue. Spoiled an otherwise great event this year, 2.2 million is a spectacular achievement. Almost teared up for them a little when they broke last year’s donation record.