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Public Donation Initiatives

 

The most successful public donation initiative appears to be the one by 11Bit which was able to raise an amount close to $1 million, an unprecedented achievement for an indie company. There are several factors that contributed to its success:

• The initiative was started by a company famous for one of the best anti-war games, A War of Mine, set in Eastern Europe. This brand recognition allowed the company to raise public awareness by drawing the parallels between the horrors of war in Ukraine and the horrors of war depicted in their product.

• The geographic proximity to Ukraine triggered social media response in the Polish games community. 

• In a vacuum of other campaigns it stood as a sole and a key fundraising campaign, playing an important role.

The fundraising campaign introduced following a week with matching by the top grossing mobile games company Supercell had moderate success, gathering slightly less than a quarter of its target of $1 million designated to be matched by another $1 million by the company.

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Bundles

 

Bundles for charity have been a common practice for many years already, allowing the companies to unite their forces to raise money for charity and sometimes for profit too, with buyers being able to commit with their idea of a fair price.

This time the same idea was used with slight adjustments:

• Bundles had a minimum price to limit the scenario of penny donations. The lower threshold was set to $10 for Bundle for Ukraine and around $40 for Humble Bundle Stand With Ukraine.

• 100% proceeds went to charity.

• The bundles offered a generous selection of titles. Bundle for Ukraine had an estimated worth of $6,577 and nearly 1000 products in a package. Humble Bundle Stand With Ukraine worth more than $2,500 if its contents were to be purchased separately.

The composition of the bundles and their timing were among factors defining their success.

The composition:

• Bundle for Ukraine had only a couple of games considered to be critically acclaimed or financially successful, including Baba Is You and Super Hot. The rest of the offered 1000 products were less popular or profitable games to say the least, some of them most likely hobbyist’s, students’ games or even prototypes.

• Humble Bundle, despite also offering numerous content, included some of the commercially successful or well received games. Interestingly enough, some of the game companies that made statements in support of Ukraine but did not disclose any donations made included their AAA games into the bundle: Metro Exodus by 4A Games normally priced at the same price point as the bundle and Ryse: Son of Rome by Crytek were the among honorable mentions and the gems of this package. Quantum Break by Remedy, which made the donation earlier, was also included in the package. The inclusion of game hits from the back catalog of AAA companies could be one of the additional factors in the success of the bundle.

Timing:

• As with other sales and promotions continuity and avoidance of overlaps between the campaigns is important. The authors see 11Bit fundraising campaign, followed by Bundle for Ukraine, followed by Humble Bundle as 3 phases in fundraising for Ukraine continuous timeline.

• The composition of mostly indie games allowed the Bundle for Ukraine to be successful without being overshadowed by competition and it was important for such an offer to appear earlier than a bundle made of games by the industry leaders.

Both bundles should be seen as examples of fundraising success, with Bundle for Ukraine generating $6 500 000 and Humble Bundle Stand with Ukraine $15 000 000, more than the sum of all individual donations made by the game companies.

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Time-Limited In-Game Campaigns with Proceeds Collected for Ukraine

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Despite several games announcing donating time-limited proceeds from their games for Ukraine, Fortnite was the first to release the amount raised and most likely the most successful to date with $50 million proceeds collected for Ukraine in only the first 2 days. The campaign will last for 2 more weeks.
 

Part 3. Creative and Non-Monetary Initiatives

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Limiting Access To Game Products and Services in Russia and Belarus

 

Many of the game platforms and game companies decided to suspend sales and services on the territory of Russia and Belarus. Many mobile game companies were forced to do so due to Google blocking microtransactions and key banner networks blocking ads, even if they initially intended to continue monetizing their games, which eventually became impossible.

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Proceeds Collected From Territory of Russia and Belarus

 

Some of the companies decided in favor of donating proceeds from the countries of Russia and Belarus to Ukraine, rather than blocking sales of products or services in these countries.

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Using Social Media Channels

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Many companies expressed their support to Ukraine by making public statements on their corporate social media accounts. This greatly contributed to the awareness about the war in Ukraine and helped the general audience to understand the nature of the conflict by condemning the actions of Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. Some of the companies used social media channels to empower the players to donate to humanitarian organizations in support of the people of Ukraine.

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Dedicating Ad Traffic for Charity Purposes

 

Some of the larger came companies and corporations, as well as game platforms, are known to have their internal proprietary ad networks. The first company to make a statement like this was Rovio.

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Selling Thematic In-Game Content

 

Some smaller companies started selling in-game items dedicated to Ukraine, with all proceeds going to humanitarian organizations helping Ukraine. Gamigo implemented such initiatives in a line-up of its games.

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Other Initiatives

 

Other initiatives set in place by the companies included but were not limited to:

• Fundraising for defense equipment for the Ukrainian army and territorial defense (predominantly Ukrainian companies)

• Helping in relocation of employees of their companies (Ubisoft, Gameloft, Embracer Group)

• Helping the Ukrainians fleeing their countries (to the great extent the companies in Poland, many companies in Europe and UK)

• Collecting physical goods, food and medical donations

• Raising the awareness around the world by participating in pro-Ukrainian rallies, giving interviews to the press, and posting on social media

• Providing psychological help lines for the employes affected by war or those with families and friends affected by war

• Other important initiatives

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Part 4. Organizations

Gathering Data Challenges

 

Some of the companies and campaigns (bundles and time limited proceeds from the game) were distributing donations between multiple organizations. In most cases the ratios of how these funds were distributed between the organizations, were not specified. This creates a challenge for the analyst to retrieve the precise data for every of those fractional donations.

In the following sections there are 2 series of data: number of mentions and the total amount received by the organization. When the number of mentions is a number supported by data (the number of times the organization’s name appears in the statements), the amount is a result of approximation and should be considered as such, approximate. The researchers still decided in favor of including it in the report, rather than omitting it.

The fractional donations of every organization inside a group mentioned in the statement was calculated by dividing the total amount by the number of companies mentioned. E.g., if Fortnite donated $50 million to UNICEF, Direct Relief, UN World Food Programme and UNHCR, it is considered that every company received $12 500 000.

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