Quebec, Canada-based Frima Studio is donating to Child's Play through its Facebook game, Rock Paper Sumo. The company is donating 100 percent of the proceeds from the purchase of select in-game items to the charity.

The special content is a seven-piece armor set specifically designed with a Child’s Play theme. Items are available individually from $0.49 USD to $1.49 USD, or can be purchased as a complete pack for $5 USD, and are available now.

Rock Paper Sumo is a twist on the classic game rock-paper-scissors, where players attempt to become the ultimate rikishi. Would-be Sumos must train hard, eat lots of calorie-rich foods to put on weight, engage in sparring sessions and fulfill dojo duties. Players spend Bento Bucks and Dojo Dollars on over 200 accessories such as cowboy hats, pink Mohawks, fu manchus, assorted tattoos, and body hair.

The Humble Indie Bundle has managed to rake in (as of this writing at least - the number ticks up by the second) $1,273,613, according to the bundle's official web site. The money collected will be donated to the Child's Play Children's Charity and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In case you have been living under a rock, the Humble Indie Bundle is a special package of five indie-developed games. Consumers choose what they want to pay for the pack and - if they choose - how much money goes to each organization.

So far, 138,813 contributions have been made and the average buying price is right around $9.18.

As an added bonus, anyone that buys the game pack gets a sixth game free - Amanita Design's Samorost 2.

Find out more at www.wolfire.com/humble.

Xwerx is celebrating the launch of its new controller enhancement product by hosting a charity event and holiday season campaign to benifit California-based charity Get-Well Gamers.

The charity part of the campaign will be highlighted at the launch party for XtendPlay on December 15 at Powersurge, a new gaming venue in Los Angeles. Xwerx's XtendPlay is an oddly shaped (it looks like your controller is wearing a Snuggie) controller enhancement for Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers.

While the add-on might look a little odd, its makers claim that it offers specific functions for hardcore gamers such as a "Soft-touch fleXlite" shape to keeps fingers and hands relaxed, airflow channels that keep hands cool and dry, and a design (size and shape) that offers comfort in any playing in any position.

Blizzard let us know that it has released two new World of Warcraft pets in the Blizzard Pet Store: Lil’ Ragnaros and the Mookin Hatchling. The Moonkin Hatchling is of particular interest to us because 50 percent of the proceeds go towards the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Last year Blizzard did something similar with the Pandaren Monk and ended up raising an impressive $1.1 million USD for the organization dedicated to making sick kids' dreams come true. Each pet cost $10 from the Blizzard store. Here's more on the Moonkin Hatchling:

Ubisoft is growing moustaches, or "mo's" in a bid to raise money for cancer. Ubisoft offices in San Francisco, Montreal, Quebec, Vancouver, and France are involved in the endeavor, which has been dubbed "Movember." Their goal is to grow a moustache for the entire month of November.

The money raised from this stunt will go towards prostate cancer research. The collective Ubisoft team have already collected close to $20,000 for the Movember Foundation and they're ranked among the top fundraising teams. You can help them stay at the top by sponsoring them. You can track the efforts of Ubisoft here. To support local offices, click one of the links below:

Gamers in Georgia and Massachusetts are preparing to launch a pair of videogame-based charity drives to benefit Child’s Play.

Pittsfield, Massachusetts-based Geeks With Issues will take to a vintage Apple IIe and “endure” a 24-hour play session of Oregon Trail in order to raise funds for both Child’s Play and the Hillcrest Educational Centers. The event kicks off at noon on November 27 and can be viewed on the Geeks website and on Pittsfield Community Television’s Channel 18, which makes sense as the team consists of cast and crew from a local television show bearing the Geeks With Issues name.

Dubbed The Battle Against Dysentery III: Wagon Train of Destiny, the event raised $612 in its 2009 incarnation. This year’s goal is $5,000.

This year’s fourth annual Desert Bus for Hope charity gaming drive will benefit from the backing of managed hosting service provider ServInt.

Canadian comedy troupe LoadingReadyRun puts on the charity initiative each year, which consists of members playing the Penn & Teller-developed game of monotony Desert Bus, which has players man the steering wheel of a bus headed from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada.

Such a trip takes eight hours in real time, and upon competition, players are awarded a single point.

Last year the charity drive, which benefits Child’s Play, raised over $140,000.

LoadingReadyRun’s Kathleen De Vere thanked ServInt for their contribution, and added, “With their hosting, we know everyone will be able to see us as we suffer for the children.”

Blizzard Entertainment this week debuted two new World of Warcraft companions - and they do more than just follow you and are look cute. The new companions are the Lil' Ragnaros and the Moonkin Hatchlin. Announced at BlizzCon earlier this year, both will be just like the Pandaren Monk when they debut on the Pet Store: proceeds will go to charity. Here is more from Blizzard:

"They’re cute, they’re portable, and they’re coming to the Blizzard Pet Store. But before they arrive, we wanted to give you a sneak peek of our two newest companions: Lil' Ragnaros and the Moonkin Hatchling. As announced at BlizzCon, the Moonkin Hatchling will follow in the charitable footsteps of the Pandaren Monk, with sales helping to benefit a good cause. More details, including the availability date and specific plans for the charity partnership, will be announced in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned!"

Benefit Evil, a three-day marathon gaming session to generate cash for sick children, is underway right now (it began at 1 PM EST today). The marathon gaming session will see five friends from Syracuse, New York band together to tackle 13 Resident Evil games. All the action will be broadcasts over the internet via www.benefitevil.com and fans can communicate with the team through chat, twitter and email. The webcast features a picture in picture live stream for the duration of the event.

IGN Entertainment is proud of its matching donation to New York-based indie video game arcade Babycastles. IGN matched the donations made by the community to help raise a total of around $13,000 in support of the indie arcade's upcoming games exhibition. The goal was $6,000. IGN Entertainment provided nearly $3,800 of the total raised by matching community donations made during the fundraiser.

The game community is backing National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in a big way, as evidenced by yesterday’s news on the gamer-driven FLAG tournament and followed by today’s announcement that EA Sports has kicked in $100,000 towards the movement as well.

This the third year in a row that the EA arm has backed the charity and this year’s donation will benefit the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization, one of two charities that the FLAG event supports as well.

The fifth annual Fight Like a Girl (FLAG) tournament will employ Halo: Reach in order to raise funds for breast cancer research.

The event takes place online on October 23rd and 24th and offers 8-player Free For All (FFA), two versus two , Firefight (with 4-player teams) and Play with Bungie, where 2-player teams can compete with or against Halo’s creators, events. Registration for single player events is $10 a person, while team events are $20. All proceeds go to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the National Cervical Cancer Coalition.

FLAG organizers Kari Toyama (The Don Wan) and Tasha Pettengill (Zoom Demon) have been putting on the tournament since 2006. The event has raised over $15,000 for breast cancer research to-date.

The organizer’s offered this comment on why they keep conducting the tournament:

Not only do we do this tournament to raise money and awareness for finding a cure to cancer, but also to show the public that gamers are kind and generous people.

October is breast cancer awareness month.

The final eight nominees have been selected by GamesAid for the final round of voting. The announcement was made at the opening of the London Games Festival. Five final winners will be chosen by GamesAid members to be supported in 2011.

The eight charities include Action for Kids, Special Effect, Rainbow Family Trust, Family Holiday Association, Families Need Fathers, The Willow Foundation, Volunteer Centre Sutton, and Huntingdon Dreamdrops. All are dedicated to children's causes and are worthy of your support.

More information on all of these UK-based charities can be found at www.gamesaid.org. To give directly to any of these groups, check out GamesAid's giving page.

Source: GI.biz

Jacksonville Jaguar Offensive Lineman Uche Nwaneri is a large man, clocking in at 6’3” tall and around 320 pounds, but he’s proving that his heart is big as well, as he is the host of an upcoming videogame tournament that will benefit local artists.

On October 1 at 6:30 PM, Nwaneri will host his Gaming 4 the Cause event at the Whiskey River bar and restaurant, which is located at 4850 Big Island Drive in Jacksonville. A $10 entry fee will allow attendees to play Madden NFL 11 against Nwaneri and other Jag players, as well as gain a chance to win a series of prizes.

Proceeds will go to Nwaneri’s House of Ambrose Foundation, which is dedicated to “enhancing and promoting the appreciation of arts by providing empowering opportunities for young artists to continue the exploration and perfection of their craft.”

Extra Life has hit the 2,000 gamer mark. What is Extra Life and why does hitting the 2000 matter? Well Extra Life is a 24-hour video game marathon that raises money for the children's hospitals. Gamers sign up to play games and 100 percent of the money raised during Extra Life 2010 goes directly to the Children’s Miracle Network. 

Extra Life kicks off at 8:00 AM (your local time) on Saturday, October 16th and ends at 8:00 AM (your local time) on Sunday, October 17th. A make-up date the following Saturday is available for those that can't get involved on the 16th.  

CCP is hosting a charity to benefit victims of flooding in Pakistan using 30-day Eve-Online subscription codes as currency. CCP calls it PLEX and it works like this: CCP Games will convert one month of playtime into real-world dollars valued between $11 - $15 USD. Players can donate as many times as they want and all the proceeds will go to aid group the Pakistan Red Crescent Society.

CCP is no stranger to raising money for disaster relief. the company behind the popular space MMO raised $40,000 for Haiti's earthquake victims.You can learn more about this latest PLEX drive by visiting Eve-Online.

Source: Joystiq

In the wake of a 2010 summer event that raised more than $3,300 for the American Cancer Society, a group of teen gamers from Pennsylvania have set their sights on a similar benefit in order to aid the American Diabetes Association.

The Zeldathon Team will broadcast marathon play sessions of various The Legend of Zelda games beginning on Monday, December 27. The group will attempt to play as much as possible over five days while attempting to recruit donations from viewers, some of whom will have the chance to win prizes.

Event Director Matthew Moffit, who lost his father and grandfather to diabetes complications, offered, “It is my hope that through this event, we can not only have lots of fun with our audience, but raise a great deal of money to help fund diabetes research as well.”

The Zeldathon Team hopes to raise $5,000 with this winter’s event.

Indie game developer Arcane Games updates on its sale of the micro-expansion for AI War (thanks Blue's News). The reason why it matters is that the company is selling the Children Of Neinzul expansion and giving the proceeds away to Child's Play. So far, the company has raised $500 in change, but its goal is to raise $14,000 for the children's charity.

As this charitable endeavor continues, the company is facing some financial trouble, detailed in the same post:

Allowing gamers to decide the fate of Gears of War 3 character Clayton Carmine will result in the Penny Arcade-backed charity Child’s Play receiving a donation of $150,000.

The Fate of Carmine campaign let participants vote on whether or not the third of four brothers to appear in the series will live, or die as siblings Anthony and Ben did before him. Votes were expressed in the purchase of “Save Carmine” or “Carmine Must Die” t-shirts, both real and in the form of Xbox Live avatar garb.

While Carmine’s fate has been chosen, Epic Games isn’t letting the results be known yet, but the company’s Cliffy B and Rod Fergusson shot the embedded YouTube video to let the gaming community know about the princely sum raised.

Microsoft also supported the charity drive, which saw 80 percent of the funds raised going to Child’s Play, with 20 percent reserved for administrative, bandwidth, and other associated support costs.

Telltale Games, Daedalic Entertainment, Deck13 Interactive, and Hothead Games have teamed up to offer a special bundle for charity called The Great Adventure 2010 Bundle. For every bundle sold, 25 percent of the proceeds will go to five different charities such as Child's Play, EFF, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Nyota e.V., and the World Wildlife Fund.

So what is in this bundle and what does it cost? According to Game, Set, Watch, the bundle is comprised of six PC adventure games in one package priced at $19.95 USD. Those games include Deck13 Interactive's Jack Keane, Daedalic Entertainment's The Whispered World, the King's Quest Collection (featuring a whopping seven games from the series), Hothead Games' Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, and Telltale's Puzzle Agent and Sam & Max Season 2.

Founded by people behind the Sarcastic Gamer website, the Extra Life charity drive encourages teams of gamers, or sole participants, to play games for a 24-hour stretch in order to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network.

The 2008 and 2009 events raised a total of $302,000, all of which went directly to the charity. The best part: anyone can join in and raise funds simply by registering, creating a personal fundraising page and then hitting up friends and relatives as sponsors.

Extra Life 2010 kicks off on Saturday, October 16 at 8:00 AM in participant’s local time zone. This year’s event also boasts involvement by a team of editors from IGN, which is sure to raise awareness of the event, and hopefully donations as well.

Entrants in this year’s challenge can also choose to contribute proceeds to the Children’s Miracle Network hospital of their choice.

A Nintendo DS helped one eight-year old boy cope with the hospital stays and treatments resulting from a diagnosis that he had acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Now nine-years old, the plight of Genre Baker of North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania inspired the formation of the Genre’s Kids with Cancer Fund, which has the goal of outfitting similarly affected sick children at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh with their own handheld game systems to help them pass the time.

Genre, in a Pittsburgh Live story on his travails, said, “Whenever I was in the hospital, I had to stay there for hours and there was nothing to do but play my (Nintendo) DS. I wanted other kids to be able to have one, too, if they didn't.”

Neighboring Irwin, Pennsylvania will be the scene of a fund raising race/walk, called Footsteps in Faith, for the charity on August 28. Entrants can choose to participate in a 5k run or a one mile walk.

One recipient of a rare and controversial item granted last month to 100 players of Valve’s Team Fortress 2, is turning a negative into a positive and has organized a charity drive that will see owners of the items delete them in order to benefit the Child’s Play charity.

The item in question is the Golden Wrench, used by the game’s Engineer class. John Tran, the man behind the charity drive, received one of the items, but claimed, in talking with Bitmob, that they were not randomly distributed, as Valve had earlier stated.

The AbleGamers Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and inspiring accessibility in videogames, has teamed up with graphic artist Justin D. Russo to create 350 unique posters for charity. The posters are called "Everybody Can Game." Measuring at 18" x 24" and available for a donation of $55, the posters convey the power and friendship of gamers around the world with three arms reaching to the sky grasping different controllers in a show of solidarity.

In case you're not familiar with Justin D. Russo, he's a graphic artist that received a lot of attention for his Kickstart program - a site that lets the community fund clever and creative ideas. Justin's idea was to create and sell videogame prints. His idea was quite popular with gamers who went out of their way to fund his ideas for the month of May.

No doubt, this charitable endeavor will earn Justin even more respect than his Kickstart project page. You can get your hands on one of these posters by visiting www.ablegamers.org/poster.

You'll never see EA or Activision doing this! Philadelphia-based indie game developer Cipher Prime is having a fundraiser to finance its move from an awful 160 sq ft space to 1000 sq ft space - and to hire an additional employee.

The "fundraiser," which began yesterday, is offering two of the company's games for $4.99 each. Both are music-based puzzle games for PC and Mac: Auditorium and Fractal. Here's the pitch from the website:

Canadian game development firm Snow Day Games has just released its iPhone game Fly vs. Car and pledged to donate half of the profits from the sale of the title to the Child’s Play charity.

Snow Day was formed just this year and is helmed by “noted educator and games scholar” Matthew M. White. Commenting on the company’s charitable aspect White said, “Through working together with Child's Play across so many wonderful platforms, we can let gamers keep doing what they love to do, and at the same time give some help to the children who need it the most – I think that's incredible.”

White’s company will make quarterly cash deposits to Child’s Play, which in turn uses the funds to provide the occupants of children’s hospitals with toys and videogames.

Fly v. Car is available in the iTunes store for $0.99.


Via GameZebo

The Indie Game Magazine (IGM) has launched a summer promotion that will serve to benefit the gaming charity Get-Well Gamers.

Through August 15, IGM will donate 20 percent of its revenue to Get-Well Gamers. The magazine is also running a Name Your Price promotion in which those who donate $20 or more will receive a one-year subscription to IGM, while donations less than $20 will see users receive an instantly downloadable issue. Extra revenue from the Name Your Price promotion will also be directed to the charity. Donators will also be entered into drawings for videogame swag.

Get-Well Gamers outfits children’s hosipitals with electronic entertainment and recently outfitted its 100th facility.

Get-Well Gamers President Ryan Sharpe stated, “We are always surprised and grateful to those who step forward to help the foundation.”

The third annual Mario Marathon, detailed here last week, ended up generating $81,876 in total, all of which goes straight to the Child’s Play charity.

The participants played through nearly 800 levels across nine Mario games over four and a half days, ending late Tuesday night. Over 300,000 visitors watched the event online or interacted with it via social media.

The participants, from Lafayette, Indiana, as detailed by Tonic.com, were Brian "Shirt Guy" Brinegar, John "Couch Guy" Groth and Chris "Slouch Guy" Deckard.

The trio announced that this year’s event would be their last, saying that they have kids, wives and lives to attend to.

The fund raisers performed dances—as seen in the video—for every $1,000 threshold reached.

2009’s event raised more than $29,000.

A charity organization for the homeless has been ordered shut after an investigation into its finances showed that money was not being used to help the disadvantaged, but was instead put towards meals, online purchases, cable TV service and videogames.

Ubiquitous throughout Manhattan, The United Homeless Organization (UHO) charged homeless people $15 to rent a table to be used as a donation center. The homeless were allowed to keep all donations accrued throughout the day (minus the $15 charge). Investigators charge that UHO’s founder Stephen Riley, and its Director, Myra Walker, used the proceeds from the table rentals as a “personal slush fund,” and used the funds to buy a variety of items, including purchases from GameStop.

New York’s Attorney General’s office ordered the organization to close, but AG Andrew Cuomo offered, “This organization's bad behavior should not undermine the public's willingness to donate to legitimate charities.”

After 17-year old Stephen Placencia died in 2008 following a fight with liver cancer, his parents decided to honor his memory by starting a foundation that outfits hospitals with consumer electronics and videogame systems.

The Kick Cancer for Stephen Foundation—the name a nod to the boy’s favorite sport, soccer—donated over $8,500 worth of devices in 2009 to the University of Arizona Oncology Clinic and is working on providing gaming systems for each room (it’s already outfitted eight rooms) at the Diamond Children's Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona.

Stephen’s mom Francie, also the foundation’s President, spoke to the Arizona Daily Star about her work, stating, “This gives them a chance to be kids and not think about being sick, being in the hospital, missing school or anything other than playing the game and enjoying it.”