Eurogamer details a bittersweet story of one Total War: Rome 2 fan who was immortalized in the game, but the 24-year-old named "James" who inspired developers Creative Assembly when he visited the studio, would later lose his fight with liver cancer.

Aksys Games passed along word that it is currently hosting a donation drive in observance of the second Anniversary of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster. To help those still suffering from the long-term effects of that horrific natural disaster, Aksys is donating a portion of the sales from its online store to the American Red Cross. For every item purchased from March 11 - 15, Aksys Games will donate $5 to the American Red Cross for ongoing relief efforts in Japan.

A new Kickstarter campaign has been launched to raise $125,000 to create a documentary about the "queer side of gaming," or the LGBTQ presence in the game industry and in the gaming community. The documentary is called "Gaming In Color: Queers and Gaymers of the Pixelated World" and hopes to expose the masses to another side of gaming culture - a side that is often hidden among the dudebros and gamer gurls of the community.

Bottomline Guild announced its plans to host a 24-hour online gaming marathon to raise money for Wounded Warrior Project called GamePocalypse 2013. This massive gaming event will take place within the virtual worlds of Rift, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, and PlanetSide 2. Gamers will be participating in events running for 24 hours, starting at 12:00AM Central Standard Time, March 16th, 2013. All proceeds from the GamePocalypse 2013 event will go directly to charity.

Bronies rejoice. Lauren Faust, who is best known for creating My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, has decided to team up with the fan-driven development team Mane6 to bring to life the pony-themed fighting game My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic. Mane6 and toy-maker Hasbro have also been in talks. You may remember that Hasbro sent the develops of the game a cease-and-desist letter which Maner6 quickly complied with. That put their little labor of love on indefinite hold.

Gaming World Wide has teamed up with Rize Up Gaming to bring their charity efforts to a community that believes in creating a positive social atmosphere for gamers of all stripes.

Fundraising for the Humble Mojam 2 Bundle officially closed on March 2, with two charities benefitting from the $517,555.12 raised during and after the 72-hour game jam ended. The Mojam 2 game jam produced several games during its 72-hour run including Vlambeer's Wasteland Kings, Tektonic by Grapefrukt, Space Hunk from Ludosity, Oxeye’s 3918, a 3D multiplayer shooter called Low-light by Wolfire Games, and four games from Mojang teams - Nuclear Pizza War, Endless Nuclear Kittens, Battle Frogs and Nuke the Dinosaurs.

We mentioned this in passing when we reported on EA and other game companies signing onto an amicus brief supporting the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, but the event deserves a little more attention: On March 7 Electronic Arts and the Human Rights Campaign will host an event to address the full spectrum of LGBT issues in gaming in New York City.

The AbleGamers Foundation will return to the Penny Arcade Expo East (PAX-E) in Boston, Massachusetts March 22-24. The organization dedicated to making gaming more accessible to those gamers with disabilities is being sponsored by Paradox Interactive and other game industry companies this year at PAX East.

An anonymous source just donated $100,000 to the Humble Bundle Mojam 2, the latest pay-what-you-want DRM-free bundle. With that huge contribution, the Humble Bundle Mojam 2 has managed to raise just over $252,000.

The charities benefitting from this latest bundle are the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Block by Block - a new collaboration with UN Habitat and Mojang. The news of this massive donation was tweeted by Mojang's Jens Bergensten:

A new game called Depression Quest hopes to raise awareness about the challenges of someone living with depression by using interactive fiction as its medium. The browser-based game was created by Zoe Quinn and Patrick Lindsey and puts players in the shoes of a 20-something as they struggle with their emotions and make daily choices that can either help get them out of their depression or send them spiraling into a state of deep despair.

The developers describe the game as follow:

The AbleGamers Foundation has partnered with Paradox Interactive to help bring video game accessibility to the Penny Arcade Expo East (PAX-E) in Boston, Massachusetts. Each year, the AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade displays the latest assistive technology for gamers with disabilities to play today’s top games with just a little help.

Over the weekend, two Newtown, Connecticut residents opened a family friendly video game arcade in the town called the Sandy Hook Arcade Center (as reported by Polygon). The all-ages arcade is meant to help the town heal and promote family values in the aftermath of the elementary school shooting in December where 26 human lives were lost as the result of a shooting rampage by a lone gunman.

On Saturday, February 16th at 6:00PM EST gamers from Storm Unity will be running a 24-hour Mega Man marathon event to benefit the Child's Play charity. The marathon will be streamed live over Twitch.TV at twitch.tv/stormunity.

The AbleGamers Foundation announced today that it is joining forces with Gaming World Wide to further its mission of fighting for more accessibility for disabled gamers from game and console makers.

In case you didn't get the memo, this week is apparently Gamer Safety Week, according to the Merchant Risk Council's Gamer Safety Alliance. This week marks the second annual awareness campaign to draw attention to gaming account safety with the hope of teaching the community about the ramifications of having their online identity compromised (hint: it's real bad).

Indie developer Imminent Games is giving 20 percent of every sale of its game Drip Drip to the Robin Hood Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund through the entire month of February. Drip Drip is described as a 2D strategy game about "saving buildings from extreme weather conditions" for Mac and Windows PCs using water simulation gameplay and a time management challenge.

This Reddit thread reveals a grand and charitable deed that Bungie did for a very sick little boy in Seattle, as detailed by The Escapist. According to the Reddit thread, Seattle-based Reddit user fiscal_ reached out to Bungie asking them to send something to his five year old son who was in the process of getting a liver transplant.

Perfect World Entertainment announced today that 2012 Rock Band charity event Ümloud! managed to raise over $42,000 dollars for the Child’s Play. Perfect World Entertainment was a key sponsor of the annual event that was held on December 6th, 2012.

Blizzard Entertainment announced via its official blog that it managed to raise $2.3 million for the American Red Cross’s ongoing Superstorm Sandy relief efforts in the month of December. World of Warcraft players were given the opportunity to purchase a new in-game pet during the month, and stepped up in droves to help raise the money.

Crowd funding company Kickstarter revealed numbers for 2012, including some interesting data related to the games that were successfully funded during the year. That data, located in this report, offers some pretty interesting statistics on game related projects. According to Kickstarter, the site saw more than 2.2 million people donate nearly $320 million to game-related projects, with over 18,000 projects successfully reaching or exceeding their funding goals in 2012.

Chuck Bittner is a quadriplegic, a comedian and an avid video game player. More importantly he is a strong advocate for disabled gamers who need the ability to use custom buttons in games because he plays a lot of them using his face. He has championed a remapping petition urging game developers and publishers to include custom button mapping in all of their biggest titles. He also wants to go to PAX East this year to further spread the important message of button remapping, but he needs your help.

Organizers of the game-related charity Child's Play announced that more than $5 million has been raised in 2012, making it the biggest year for the charity to-date. In 2011 Child's Play managed to raise $3.5 million. A representative for the charity thanked event organizers, volunteers, and participants in various charity drives for their hard work and dedication to achieve this new milestone.

Gamers Outreach passed along word that registration for the Gamers For Giving 2013 LAN event is now open at lanfest.intel.com/gamers-outreach. The event will take place on February 16th and 17th at the EMU Student Center (900 Oakwood Street) in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The event is a collaboration between Gamers Outreach, the Intel LANFest series, and the student government of Eastern Michigan University.

A group of gamers and Zelda series fans came together on December 27 to kick off a five-day Zelda-focused gaming marathon to raise money for charity. The event lasted until January 1, 2013, and while the gang was probably physically and mentally exhausted, they managed to raise a lot of money for the charity of their choice.

A group of gamers and Zelda series fans have come together under the team name of Fun For Freedom to create what they call a "Zeldathon." The group will play through Nintendo's popular RPG adventure games for charity over the next five days while streaming their antics on this Twitch.tv channel.

Starting at right around noon on December 29 and running right through New Year's Eve, Extra Lives will host a Pokémon gameplay marathon to raise money for charity. Participants will play through up to three games at a time, including a few unsavory entries in the series and even some bootleg versions of games that are Pokémon-based. The website will live stream the triumphs and tragedies of participants as they attempt to play through multiple versions of the game at once, starting with three different versions of the first Game Boy generation of Pokémon games.

Mine-Thon 2 has concluded, with the official web site showing that event raised $10,148.00 for the Child's Play children's charity. Mine-Thon is a seventy-two hour, non-stop Minecraft gameplay marathon broadcast live via Twitch TV.

Participants play the game, entertain viewers and ask for donations, with all the proceeds going to charity. This is the second year of the 72-hour marathon and this year organizers raised a heck of a lot more money for Child's Play (last year they raised right around $4,400).

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media have revealed the participating sponsors and partners for the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge. For the third year, the AMD Foundation, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) will once again serve as key sponsors for the Challenge. New partners include the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Hive NYC Learning Network.

While many in the community are celebrating the fact that Johann Sebastian's Sportsfriends managed to hit its Kickstarter funding goal in the eleventh hour, many might not know that one person was instrumental in that happening: Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson. Notch had originally pledged $5,000 to the project but later decided to increase the amount he was giving by $3,000 to a total of $8,000.