Before the launch of Fortnite’s Chapter 3 Season 2 batch of content on the weekend, Epic Games announced that all of the income for Fortnite-related purchases from season launch to April 3rd would be donated to organizations supporting the relief effort in Ukraine.
Just over a day later, the official Fortnite Twitter account revealed that within the first 24 hours of this initiative, the company had raised $36 million dollars.
Together we’ve already raised $36 million USD for humanitarian relief for Ukraine. The funds will go to @UNICEF, @WFP, @Refugees, @DirectRelief. pic.twitter.com/JQESsGxDVt
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) March 21, 2022
Given that Fortnite averages around 3 to 8 million concurrent players on an average day and can garner over 15 million players during major events, this number makes a lot of sense as many of these Fortnite enthusiasts would have bought the Season 2 Battle Pass as soon as it went on sale on the same day the initiative started. A Fortnite Battle Pass retails for around $10.
This number will also likely rise significantly given that some players would have waited to buy the Battle Pass on the following day due to launch server issues that prevented many from playing. There’s also those, like myself, that use the Fortnite Crew subscription to play the Battle Pass content. All those Crew renewal fees will also go towards the fundraising effort for accounts that are charged before April 3rd.
And let’s not forget all of the inevitable V-Bucks purchases that will happen when some fresh Fortnite store content is added next week or the week after.
It’s unclear if the $36 million includes funds raised by Xbox’s partnership in the initiative though it’s probably safe to assume that it does.
It’ll be interesting to see just how much is raised in total by April 3rd.
In other Ukraine fundraising news, Microsoft is also assisting in raising funds for UNICEF via the company’s Microsoft Rewards points program while The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer, CD PROJEKT RED, donated $240,000 to PAH earlier this month.
