PLEX for GOOD for the Australian Bushfires: The Results
Hello caring capsuleers!
On Wednesday, 15 January 2020 the PLEX for GOOD for the Australian Bushfires campaign got underway. In no time at all donations began rolling in, and players began organising their own PLEX drives and events to raise awareness and gather donations for the campaign.
The campaign concluded on Sunday, 26 January 2020 and now we’re happy to have some information for you about how this PLEX for GOOD turned out!
PLEX for GOOD is a charitable program operated by CCP Games on behalf of EVE Online players. It provides a way for EVE players to donate to a charitable cause through the use of the digital currency PLEX. There are many people who are quite wealthy in EVE Online but may not have much to spare IRL. PLEX for GOOD creates an opportunity for charitable giving for those who otherwise might not have the means to donate real money.
THE RESULTS
In the week after the campaign concluded we tallied up the total donations and were taken aback when we realised just how much the EVE community had raised:
An astonishing US$107,454 has been raised which far exceeded our predictions. To further put this amount in context, that equates to:
- 2,687,693 PLEX
- 448 years of game time
- 9.14 trillion ISK worth of PLEX at current market prices
This makes PLEX for GOOD for the Australian Bushfires our second most successful campaign since the first PLEX for GOOD all the way back in 2005:
- 2005 - $25,326 – South East Asia (Tsunami)
- 2010 - $34,350 – Haiti (Earthquake)
- 2010 - $38,900 – Pakistan (Monsoon)
- 2011 - $44,600 – Japan (Earthquake and tsunami)
- 2011 - $32,900 – United States (Hurricane Irene)
- 2013 - $190,890 – Philippines (Typhoon Haiyan)
- 2015 - $103,650 – Nepal (Earthquake)
- 2020 - $107,454 - Australia (Bushfires)
This campaign also brings the total raised for charity across all PLEX for GOOD campaigns to US$578,070 since 2005, an incredible feat which all EVE Online players can be proud of!
THE GENEROUS EVE ONLINE COMMUNITY
Of course we have to once again highlight the astonishing donation by Kelon Darklight who auctioned off the incredibly rare Gold Magnate he earned when the team he captained won the Amarr Championships at Fanfest in 2016. This exotic ship fetched a winning bid of 1,001,001 PLEX and once the auction concluded he immediately donated the full amount to PLEX for GOOD. His donation alone accounts for over a third of all the PLEX raised during the campaign and catapulted the total over the $100k mark.
Also deserving of special mention are all the players who organised and promoted public events to drive donations for PLEX for GOOD, such as the giant free-for-all brawl which brought together Australian timezone players from all over New Eden, or the Zirnitra kill event where over 1,000 players turned up to write themselves into EVE history by appearing on the killmail of the first Triglavian dreadnought to be destroyed in the game.
Then there was the two-day Raid-a-thon organised by the hard working team at Streamfleet which brought together dozens of EVE’s talented Twitch streamers to raise even more PLEX. Other valiant streamer efforts such as MyLeftArm's 24 hour stream and Squishy and the B-Team's drive that raised about 40k PLEX also helped the cause.
However, not everyone in New Eden has the means to donate or raise huge amounts of PLEX. The vast majority of donations made to this campaign were small, individual donations made by players who scraped together whatever they could and gave out of generosity of their hearts.
So whether you donated one million PLEX or one hundred PLEX is beside the point - ALL capsuleers who contributed to PLEX for GOOD can feel proud that they have made a contribution to an important cause, and the money raised will have a real, meaningful impact on those whose lives have been tragically affected by the destructive bushfires in Australia.
THE HANDOVER
CCP Games and the Icelandic Red Cross came together at CCP’s headquarters in Reykjavik to officially hand over the cheque for the money raised on behalf of the capsuleers of New Eden.
The Icelandic Red Cross sends their profound thanks to the players of EVE Online for this incredible display of humanity and generosity. They will now deliver the funds to their Australian Red Cross counterparts where it will in turn find its way to the relief services that are being provided on the ground to those affected.
THE REWARD
As with previous PLEX for GOOD campaigns, people who donated the minimum 100 PLEX will receive in-game apparel as a ‘thank you’ from CCP for their generosity. This will consist of two t-shirts (one mens and one womens) featuring the logo of the Reserve Frontier Safeguard (RFS) for your avatars to wear proudly:
The DED's Reserve Frontier Safeguard service, commonly known as the RFS or "Safeguarders", has its origins in a lowsec/nullsec frontier patrol operated using reservists from the member states of CONCORD. The RFS originally provided a security patrol presence in lowsec systems with planetary colonies and other orbital settlements. Since the expansion of CONCORD's mandate and permanent DED fleet capacity in YC105, the RFS has evolved into an organization focused on providing disaster relief to colonies across lowsec space.
Anyone who donated the minimum 100 PLEX will receive one pair of the shirts. At 500 PLEX you will receive two pairs and then an additional pair for every 500 PLEX donated after that.
Our art team is hard at work on preparing these assets and we hope to have them delivered to donors sometime in March. In the event that you made your donation as part of a collection being taken up by your corp, alliance, player group or other means where you won’t be directly credited for it, we will provide instructions about what you need to do at that time to ensure that everyone who is entitled to apparel receives theirs!
IN CONCLUSION
Unlike many of the disasters that PLEX for GOOD has assisted with, the Australian Bushfires were not a sudden, jarring event like an earthquake or a tsunami. It was something that built up slowly over a long period of time and it would be several months before the true scale of the disaster had manifested.
Embarking on this fundraiser, we were uncertain if it would attract as significant an amount of donations as we’ve seen in the past. By the time PLEX for GOOD for the Australian Bushfires began, the scale of the catastrophe in Australia had been headline news around the world for some time. We wondered if people had already given all they could through other means, or if the impact of the event had already begun to diminish in peoples’ minds.
What we’ve seen instead is one of the biggest PLEX for GOOD campaigns we’ve ever run, and once again we here at CCP have been humbled and moved by the capacity for caring, empathy and generosity that the EVE Online community possesses.
We want to acknowledge those in the community who began calling on CCP to bring back PLEX for GOOD to help with this disaster, and also the many others who rallied to those calls. Our players are a constant source of pride and inspiration to us here at CCP and we truly feel that is the greatest online gaming community that has ever existed.
Before we sign off, we want to leave you with a special message:
And also on behalf of everyone here at CCP: Thank you, capsuleers. o7
- The EVE Development Team
