SpecialEffect raises over £300,000 for One Special Day

Gaming charity Special Effect has announced it’s raised over 300,000 during its One Special Day campaign, far outstripping its initial target of 100,000.

This year’s event saw a number of activities take place on September 29th, including a special charity auction, livestreams, and game-themed cake baking. Revenue from game sales and in-game purchases on a number of indie titles in the UK also helped smash the charity’s target, with over 250,000 of the total being raised by the mobile games industry and their communities.

All the money raised will go towards SpecialEffect’s work in creating ways for people with physical disabilities to play games.

The industry partners involved in the event were Seriously, Unity, Supercell, SEGA, Double Fine, Codemasters, Rovio, Playdemic, Yogscast, Space Ape, Nordeus, Twitch, Ripstone, Frontier Developments, First Touch Games, Bossa Studios, EA Mobile, 505 Games, New Star Games, Boombit Games, Bungie Foundation, The Chinese Room, Curve Digital, Playground Games, Ubisoft Reflections, Firefly Studios, GAME, Nomad Games, MAG Interactive, Zeptolab, eRepublik Labs, Everywear Games, Lightneer, Payload Studios, Sumo Digital, Fresh Planet, Cooperative Ventures, Future plc, Gamesindustry.biz, nDreams, London Studio (Sony), PlayRaven, Prettygreat, Dots, Futureplay, Glu, Halfbrick, Digital Legends, SOVR, Rare, Insert Coin, Remedy Entertainment, NaturalMotion/Zynga, SEGA Hardlight, Plan of Attack, Yakuto, Tactile Entertainment, UKIE, Rebellion, Bandai Namco, Sports Interactive, Creative Assembly, Tundra, Humble Bundle, EA, Escape Technology, Razer, Dingit.tv, Fingersoft, Make Real, Jam City and Disruptor Beam.

This total is way beyond all expectation," said Dr Mick Donegan, founder and CEO of SpecialEffect."We cannot thank all our games industry partners enough for coming together to support people with disabilities. It’s an astonishing, game-changing total for us. It funds not only our lifelong one-to-one work with people who need our help, but also our collaboration with developers in making games more accessible to severely disabled gamers worldwide.

We’ve had an amazing time working with our partners during this event. The games industry and their communities have our heartfelt thanks for the tremendous generosity they have shown.”

Next year’s One Special Day event will take place on Friday September 28th.

Look out for a full interview with Dr Mick Donegan about SpecialEffect’s fundraising efforts in next week’s MCV.