Last week the team behind Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, the online survival shooter that’s become incredibly popular with consumers and streamers, held a charity invitational. The result was some of the best competitive action the game has yet seen, and nearly a quarter-million dollars raised for charity.
The beneficiary was Gamers Outreach, which “eases the burdens of hospitalization by providing equipment, technology and software to help kids cope with treatment.” The PUBG community chipped in more than $120,000, with developer and publisher Bluehole matching the first $100,000 for a total of $223,357 raised.
The tournament was stacked with a highly-skilled, international field including the likes of sharpshooters Lirik and Sacriel. Top teams included Europe’s kylank_ and Pacifae and North America’s MrGrimmz and Anthony_Kongphan. Two contenders — Hayz and MrGrimmz — tied for the most kills at 12 apiece, with each receiving a new Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card as their prize.
Just how well is PUBG doing on Steam? A month ago the game sailed past one million copies sold, beating the pace set by Day Z in 2013. Less than a month later, that number has doubled to two million copies.
“One of the main reasons we were able to hit this sales milestone is that we have a dedicated community who has helped us refine Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds,” said Gang-Seok Kim, CEO of Bluehole Inc. “We felt this invitational was a great way to give back and are pleased to make this small contribution to the cause. We are glad to support Gamers Outreach in their mission to provide recreation to hospitalized children and help their families cope with long-term treatment.”
Just today, the team here at Polygon tried our hand at forming a squad and dropping into the game. You can watch more than an hour of that experiment below.
