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.
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.
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Shacknews
replyXav 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.-
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I picked a random cause off the top of my head:
http://www.techlicious.com/buyers-guide/products-that-donate-to-breast-cancer-research/
The 50% of sales is pretty damned generous compared to the vast majority of stuff listed on that page.
I couldn't find a similar list for The Make-A-Wish foundation.
I found this page: but it wasn't as helpful: http://www.wish.org/supporters/promotions
I think it's silly to quibble about the amount when it's pretty high. As many people have said, they didn't have to do a damned thing at all.
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http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100001530
They're starting to donate 100% of sales now. Also, fuck you.-
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?-
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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. -
lol "WoW camp"
you just sound like an asshole
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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?
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Your post is the worst post today.
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How dare they only contribute 800k.
You're an idiot btw.-
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Wrong. Money has no owners, only spenders.
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this kind of response is OK now? "You're an idiot?"
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I suppose that was a little more insulting than it needed to be. How about "your post is idiotic"? (not you obviously)
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A single day's subscription revenue would be way more substantial, but a week's day subscription revenue would be even way MORE substantial!
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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.-
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.
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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.
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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.-
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More direct link : http://www.wowwiki.com/Ezra_Chatterton
Also... :'( -
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That's lunch money to them
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How about they be charitable and give us diablo 3 this year?
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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. -
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and if they had done nothing we wouldn't even be discussing it. Why are you so against this?
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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-
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.-
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!
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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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