Today marks SpecialEffect’s annual One Special Day fundraising campaign, where the games industry collaborates to raise money for the charity, which aims to help bring gaming to disabled gamers.
As part of the campaign, gamers are invited to raise funds for the charity by purchasing select titles and DLC from the charity’s industry partners as part of the One Special Day Steam Promotion (5th to 8th October) and the Mobile Promotion (October 6th), with industry partners donating a percentage of the resulting revenue.
A range of other activities and studio events have already raised over £100,000 ($121,509), with further events to be held on One Special Day Itself. Among the activities are virtual challenge events, abseiling, and a one-button game jam.
Buy, Play, Donate
SpecialEffect has over 90 partners, and helps thousands of disabled users every year. The charity works with teams of therapists and technical specialists to provide assessments and customised technology loans to enrich the lives of those with disabilities. In turn, the charity passes its learnings to hardware and software developers, helping them lower the barriers of use and make their products more accessible to disabled users worldwide.
“We are seeing an ever-increasing demand for our services, which are all provided without charge,” said founder and CEO Dr Mick Donegan. “The support the event receives from the games industry is absolutely vital in making sure we can continue to reach every disabled person that needs our help. Without One Special Day, we simply couldn’t bring a better quality of life to so many people across the world, and we’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone involved in One Special Day – industry, gamers and donors.”
One Special day will be clearly visible today across mobile apps, Steam, and social media, while participating companies will relay One Special Day’s ‘Buy, Play, Donate’ message to users, declaring themselves a part of one of the industry’s largest charitable endeavours of the year.
This article was first published on PocketGamer.biz.
Lewis Rees is a journalist, author, and escape room enthusiast based in South Wales. He got his degree in Film and Video from the University of Glamorgan. He's been a gamer all his life.
