Blizzard donates $800K to Make-A-Wish Foundation

Blizzard Entertainment donated $800,000 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation based on the generosity of its users who purchased a special in-game pet in World of Warcraft.

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The Make-A-Wish Foundation has announced that Blizzard Entertainment has donated $800,000 to the charity, which is known for making the dreams of sick and terminally ill children come true, GamePolitics.com reports.

But it was gamers who really made the large deposit a reality. The donation equals to 50 per cent of the total sales Blizzard Entertainment accrued during the months of November and December 2010 from selling a special in-game pet--the Moonkin Hatchling--for World of Warcraft.

On World Wish Day (April 29), Blizzard Entertainment made the wishes of two boys come true by inviting the fans and their families to the company's office in Irvine, California. According to the report, both children were able to enjoy "an exclusive learning experience with the World of Warcraft development team, including an inside look at how the game is created."

Blizzard CEO and co-founder, Mike Morhaime, noted that the developer behind such high profile franchises as Diablo and StarCraft has a long relationship with the charity and are "proud to help contribute to the great work they do for children."

To make a donation to Make-A-Wish Foundation visit wish.org.

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 5, 2011 2:30 PM

    Xav de Matos posted a new article, Blizzard donates $800K to Make-A-Wish Foundation.

    Blizzard Entertainment donated $800,000 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation based on the generosity of its users who purchased a special in-game pet in World of Warcraft.

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 2:39 PM

      Guess this is cool, but a single day's subscription revenue would be way more substantial.

      • DM7 legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
        reply
        May 5, 2011 2:40 PM

        ...or they could have done nothing. What have you done? :

        • reply
          May 5, 2011 2:57 PM

          Donated more than 1/365th of my salary to Charity last year?

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 3:18 PM

            And your negative complaint about a SINGLE donation (which does not equal all of Blizzard's charitable donations for the year) really doesn't say much for your personally charitable nature. If you really want to encourage charity, rather than just complain that Blizzard makes a lot of money, then you should be applauding this, and encourage them to do this without acting like such a silly goose.

            • reply
              May 5, 2011 3:33 PM

              They donated half their sales for a fucking pet. The man hours to create a pet must be in the 10's or 20's at most. HALF. OF THEIR SALES. You know, the part where it cost them at most 2 grand to design and deploy this thing? Then they walk away with 1.6 million, give half to charity and get a pat on the back? You know what would be really commendable? All of the sales for this bullshit.

              • reply
                May 5, 2011 3:39 PM

                [deleted]

              • reply
                May 5, 2011 3:40 PM

                Just be glad they did anything at all.

                You're probably a communist anyways.

              • reply
                May 5, 2011 3:43 PM

                half of sales is pretty damned good for a charity drive. most retailers don't do that much. A lot of times, it's sub 10%.

                • reply
                  May 5, 2011 3:50 PM

                  Sales... of a virtual good which cost almost nothing (relative to revenue) to make. I think this is why I am getting so cantankerous over this. Also most of the retailers I encounter who do charity drives don't beat around the bush, you don't have to buy anything other than a piece of paper. The money you pledge is what goes to the charity.

              • reply
                May 5, 2011 4:06 PM

                Goddamnit, just shut up.

              • reply
                May 5, 2011 4:09 PM

                http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100001530

                They're starting to donate 100% of sales now. Also, fuck you.

                • reply
                  May 5, 2011 4:21 PM

                  Good for them. That's great to see. The vitriol coming out of the WoW camp for me pointing this out is incredible.

                  If I were to cut out paper dolls from a stack of paper and sell them for a profit of 1$ per doll and I got an overwhelming response by indicating proceeds would go to charity and I sold 10000 of these dolls (Luckily I can cut more than one at a time. In fact, I can cut them almost instantly once I've designed them) and then I went and gave $5000 of it to charity, and I made a post here on shacknews about it, do you think I would be commended, or slammed?

                  • reply
                    May 5, 2011 4:24 PM

                    [deleted]

                  • reply
                    May 5, 2011 4:25 PM

                    Congrats, dude, you just stole the title of the Worst Poster on the Shack from cptstern.

                    That takes a fuckton of effort.

                  • reply
                    May 5, 2011 4:25 PM

                    Except Blizzard didn't post about it. Xav de Matos wrote an article on the Shack linking to a report made by the Make-A-Wish foundation.

                    • reply
                      May 5, 2011 4:27 PM

                      And it doesn't look like the money made off pet sales was originally intended to go to charity.

                  • reply
                    May 5, 2011 4:30 PM

                    Assuming you made it clear from the start in the same way that Blizzard did that 50% of the purchasing price would go to charity then i'm fairly sure you would be commended. Just a shame you can't actually do this rather that having a go at people that have done it.

                  • reply
                    May 5, 2011 4:33 PM

                    Wow. This is one of the dumbest fucking posts I've seen in a long time.

                  • reply
                    May 5, 2011 4:54 PM

                    People aren't responding negatively to your post because you dared criticize Blizzard or WoW. They are responding negatively because it seems ridiculous to complain about a large donation not being quite large enough.

                    The donation is a good thing. There's no need to shit all over it.

                  • reply
                    May 5, 2011 7:05 PM

                    Has nothing to do with the "WoW camp" - you're being a dick.

                  • reply
                    May 5, 2011 8:11 PM

                    lol "WoW camp"

                    you just sound like an asshole

              • reply
                May 5, 2011 4:30 PM

                Blizzard has absolutely no obligation (aside from maybe some good PR) to give to charity in the first place. You think any of the Make-A-Wish kids are complaining?

              • reply
                May 5, 2011 7:07 PM

                Aww. Did they nurf your favorite class recently? Join the fucking club.

            • reply
              May 5, 2011 3:55 PM

              ryuuseki is *very* charitable. He's let me bum more than 5 smokes off him.

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 4:08 PM

            wow you're a douche

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 4:56 PM

            hahahaha

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 3:02 PM

        Your post is the worst post today.

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 3:23 PM

        How dare they only contribute 800k.


        You're an idiot btw.

        • reply
          May 5, 2011 4:06 PM

          $800,000 of other people's money.

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 4:16 PM

            ... where do you think money comes from?

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 4:20 PM

            No, i'm pretty sure when people bought the pet that money became Blizzard's.

            • reply
              May 5, 2011 4:23 PM

              No, money generated through the promise of its donation to the charity was never Blizzard's to keep.

              • reply
                May 5, 2011 4:26 PM

                [deleted]

                • reply
                  May 5, 2011 4:27 PM

                  I'm not trying to say that they did. I'm saying that Blizzard doesn't really deserve credit for the donation. They only deserve credit for their investment of the labour to create the item, absorbing the transaction costs, and the idea.

            • reply
              May 5, 2011 5:10 PM

              Wrong. Money has no owners, only spenders.

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 4:20 PM

            Hahahahaha... oh wow.

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 5:03 PM

            lol

        • reply
          May 5, 2011 4:38 PM

          this kind of response is OK now? "You're an idiot?"

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 4:40 PM

            In this case? It absolutely should be.

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 4:40 PM

            I suppose that was a little more insulting than it needed to be. How about "your post is idiotic"? (not you obviously)

            • reply
              May 5, 2011 4:45 PM

              "Check your password because someone else is logging on and writing idiotic posts."

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 3:52 PM

        really dude?

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 4:01 PM

        A single day's subscription revenue would be way more substantial, but a week's day subscription revenue would be even way MORE substantial!

        • reply
          May 5, 2011 4:22 PM

          Fuck that, any money they are making from subscriptions or anything other than the discs, paper and cardboard their games come on would be a fair contribution.

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 4:13 PM

        They were also matching employee donations in March, duder.

        • reply
          May 5, 2011 4:15 PM

          Yeah, but they weren't matching employee SALARIES to charity! /gun

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 2:55 PM

      nice tax write off

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 3:28 PM

      And they got the drive for Japan going right now, started a couple of days ago I believe.

      Can't believe they sold pets for 1.6 Million over two months! I planned to buy one, but I sort of forgot.

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 3:37 PM

        interesting that the Japan one is 100% rather than the MAW which was 50%.

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 3:51 PM

        The more impressive number is probably the cost & time & people to implement the pets. They probably got well over 98% profit for a weeks worth of work. I'm not beating up Blizzard but I doubt the pets are a painstaking month and more to model, animate and texture.

        • reply
          May 5, 2011 4:26 PM

          You'd be surprised. I oversaw the process for making weapons for a video game and it was definitely a couple weeks per item, more if it required a special animation. (You also left out the concept art.) I could see it stretching out to a month for something complicated.

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 5:17 PM

            I think a lot of the items blizzard is selling are things that are just reskinned. They are already built, UVd, and animated and just need a texture/FX pass and implemented to work in game making their dev time for new versions of an old mount or pet pretty small.

            I mean I didn't looks so maybe these are all knew assets but I know at least one of the mounts was just a reskinned mount that already existed in the game.

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 3:38 PM

      Just be glad they did anything at all.

      You're probably a communist anyways.

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 4:00 PM

      I remember reading something they did for a Make-A-Wish kid. It was pretty impressive, but I can't remember exactly what right now.

      Make-A-Wish is an awesome organization. If you get a chance volunteer to help them with the kids. Its a pretty humbling and fulfilling experience to see the kids have the most amazing day when they have so much hardship.

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 4:23 PM

      That's lunch money to them

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 4:25 PM

      Only 800k? PFFT. Even if rounded up to 1 million....1 million isn't cool. You know what's cool?


      One.....

      Billion......

      Dollars.


    • reply
      May 5, 2011 4:28 PM

      For someone who had a family member who was able to have their own Make-A-Wish, Thank you Blizzard.

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 4:42 PM

        It is great that make a wish can exist and provide the services they do. No one is saying anything to the contrary, and certainly every contribution helps.
        BTW, net assets after all expenses (including trips) for make a wish USA were 164 million in 2009.

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 4:36 PM

      How about they be charitable and give us diablo 3 this year?

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 5:02 PM

      Alright you fuckers, let's all match Blizzards contributions to a charity of your choice. Based off total gross revenue data from 2007 (before activision ruined the whole financial reporting scheme)

      Take you annual salary and multiply it by .0006

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 5:13 PM

        I don't understand why you're being so stubborn about this. Nobody's trying to argue Blizzard is a magical place full of nectar and altruism; I think most of us are just happy that nearly a million dollars is going to a worthwhile charity. It would certainly have been way easier for them to just keep all that money as profit and go around wearing moneyhats and buying new cars. The fact that Blizzard is a very successful company has little to no bearing on the concrete effects of their donation.

        And it's a bit silly to compare individual donations to that of a business, not least because the particular business we're talking about is large and gross revenue is vastly different than even all of our combined incomes. Tax rates are likely substantially different, as are expenses. I really don't see the point of this follow-up post except to inform us that you are extremely stubborn about admitting that your original post was silly. It's okay, we all do it.

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 5:29 PM

        Because hey, we all know Blizzard has only made this one donation and never will make another, right? Nice made up percentage, btw.

        • reply
          May 5, 2011 5:31 PM

          Again this isn't really their donation so much as a proxied group donation that they got to capitalize on, but yeah, that percentage is legit. 800000 / 1.2 billion
          Anyways, I've made my contribution so either donate or stfu :)

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 5:55 PM

            Wait, so it IS Blizzard's donation when we make figures, but it's not when we're not making figures? I don't understand. Is it Blizz's or not?

            Also, what the fuck does it matter to you? They donated likely well over $790,000 more than you did.

          • reply
            May 5, 2011 8:40 PM

            Does your horse have a name? In this subthread we name ryuuseki's horse!

            Duke Smarmy von Huffanpuff.

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 5:37 PM

        Do humanity a favor and stick your face in a blender.

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 8:12 PM

        and if they had done nothing we wouldn't even be discussing it. Why are you so against this?

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 5:32 PM

      I'm glad the rich white kids in hospitals get to visit Blizzard while thousands of people die of hunger and disease in other parts of the world.
      come at me bros

      • reply
        May 5, 2011 5:45 PM

        I wasn't planning on commenting in this thread, but I'll go out of my way to respond to this. Usually kids that receive Make-A-Wish requests have either had a long life of suffering, or are in for a future of suffering. That Blizzard was able to allay their suffering for a few hours is great thing.

        They didn't have to do that. Requests get turned down all the time.

        • reply
          May 5, 2011 5:49 PM

          Hell, I wish I could re-do my wish and request to visit Blizzard. I chose poorly and visited the set of Star Trek: Voyager instead.

          WAIT, NO. STRIKE THAT. I WISH RELIC WOULD RELEASE HOMEWORLD 3!

    • reply
      May 5, 2011 6:57 PM

      It's going to come back to them towards getting Diablo 3 out sooner if they happen to get the wrong kid

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