Epic Games and Microsoft have raised more than $50 million already for humanitarian relief efforts supporting Ukraine, the developer has announced. As confirmed previously, Epic Games is donating all proceeds from Fortnite to charity between March 20 and April 3 to support the country after it was invaded by Russia.
Connected to this, Xbox is donating its net proceeds from Fortnite during the period to support charitable efforts for the people of Ukraine. Xbox is understood to receive a platform fee at about 30%, and given the size and stature of Fortnite, this percentage is likely a major chunk of change. Epic’s blog post suggests the $36 million is a combination of the money donated by Epic and Xbox together.
As of today, we’ve raised $50 million USD together in humanitarian relief funds to support people affected by the war in Ukraine.
To see more about how the funds are being distributed visit https://t.co/aexRh7ZEWQ pic.twitter.com/IETgljrXV8
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) March 22, 2022
Epic and Microsoft are donating the funds to UNICEF, Direct Relief, World Food Programme, and the UN Refugee Agency. These groups provide emergency aid through the distribution of food and water, as well as water and other essentials. The money will also help with legal aid and to provide shelter. Epic Games said it will add more charitable partners in the coming weeks.
Epic clarified that it is sending funds to these charities as fast as it can. This means Epic is donating the money before it even gets cleared into Epic’s own bank account. “We’re not waiting for the actual funds to come in from our platform and payment partners, which can take a while depending on how the transaction was processed. As transactions are reported, we’ll log them and send the funds to the humanitarian relief organizations within days,” Epic said.
The funds come from purchases of V-Bucks, Fortnite Crew, gifted battle passes, and cosmetics. Any V-Bucks cards or cosmetic DLC purchases from a retail store between March 20-April 3 will also be counted and donated to the charities.
And when Epic says it’s donating 100% of the proceeds from these sales, that means the gross purchase price minus taxes, refunds, returns, reversals, and third-party platform fees. For Xbox, the wording is similar: Microsoft will donate the gross proceeds of its cut after returns & chargebacks, billing costs, bandwidth cost, operations cost, and taxes.
In the wake of the attacks, Ukraine has asked PlayStation, Xbox, and esports organizations to stop supporting Russia. Multiple movie studios have stopped releasing new films in the country, while Apple no longer sells any products there.
If you want to help relief efforts, we’ve assembled a list of humanitarian organizations like the Ukrainian Red Cross and UNICEF that you can donate to.
This story has been, and will continue to be, updated as new funding totals are announced.
Source: Gamespot
