Games Done Quick speedrunners raised $400,000 for coronavirus relief

The recently-concluded speedrunning extravaganza Corona Relief Done Quick was a big success, raising $400,000 to support Direct Relief, a charity organization working to provide personal protective equipment and other medical items to healthcare workers battling the COVID-19 outbreak. That figure is lower than the multi-million-dollar amounts raised by the long Awesome Games Done Quick and Summer Games Done Quick events—they each run for a week, while CRDQ was a 60-hour weekend fling—but the GDQ team said the total "marks a new high for our side event efforts."

Hitting that nice, round number was a "down to the wire" kind of thing:

"As always, 100% of the donations go directly to the charity. Direct Relief is coordinating with public health authorities, nonprofit organizations and businesses in the U.S. and globally to provide personal protective equipment and essential medical items to health workers responding to coronavirus (COVID-19)," GDQ said.

"We'd like to thank all the sponsors, donors, runners, and volunteers who helped make this event such a success! Although our event has ended, we hope that you continue to support the battle against COVID-19 in any way you can. Thank you for your support!"

If you've got a few days to kill, you can catch the whole show on GDQ's Twitch channel, and it appears that individual runs are also being uploaded to the GDQ YouTube channel. That'll take some time, but for now you can catch Halo: Combat Evolved in under an hour and a half, and a 34-minute Shovel Knight: King of Cards run—with explanations of why the speedrunners are doing what they do, which for me is the most interesting part of the process—down below.

The next big speedrunning festival, Summer Games Done Quick, is now scheduled to run August 16-23. Game submissions and on-site volunteer applications will be open April 29-May 9, and you can register to attend (passes are not sold on-site) from June 7-July 20.