Epic Fortnite Fund Raising Campaign Triumphantly Raises $144M For Ukraine Humanitarian Relief

In February of this year, Russia invaded the nation of Ukraine. Unfortunately, the actions of Russia displaced many people from their homes, creating refugees, homeless, many injuries, missing people, and, sadly, the loss of life. These are somber, eye awakening events. However, in the eyes of adversity mankind has a habit of rising up to help those who truly are in need. Epic and Xbox have managed to do just that.

In the last couple of months, we have seen humanitarian aid rise up from many places. The games and development industry is no different. Such as itch.io, a marketplace for indie developers to get its games out, which raised over $6.3 million dollars. And humble Bundle's Stand with Ukraine Bundle was at $5 million when we reported on it—by the end, it raised over $20 million! These are incredible amounts of money raised to help the people of Ukraine.
Epic and Microsoft, however, through Fortnite, raised a whopping $144 million dollars. This all comes from a Fortnite fundraising campaign that started a little over two weeks ago by Epic Games, and Xbox, where they pledged 100% of net profits from in-game sales to go towards humanitarian efforts organizations such as Direct Relief, UNICEF, the UN World Food Program, the UN Refugee Agency, and World Central Kitchen. Epic and Microsoft promised that they would shell out the cash to the charities once they had their totals, even before payment processors finished processing. This means that it is likely that the charities already have their funds while Epic and Microsoft wait for payroll processors to finish their work to pay out to Epic and Microsoft.

While the fundraisers that we've mentioned above are all over this does not mean they are the last ones we'll see. Of course, if you still wish to help the people of Ukraine, you could donate directly to each of the associated organizations yourself if so inclined. If you don't have funds to spare, you could always volunteer your time to these organizations. The tragedies of these people are horrible, and hopefully, we can be a little light in their day.