Five Nights at Freddy's Creator Donates $250k to St. Jude's Children Hospital

Over the weekend, Scott Cawthon, creator of the Five Nights at Freddy's series, donated $249,999 to a St. Jude Children's Hospital fundraising marathon by Twitch streamer Dawko.

The stream was part of a partnership between the video streaming service Twitch and St. Jude Children's Hospital called Play Live. According to the program's website, participants can promote St. Jude on their streams to earn rewards like community service hours for money that they raise. St. Jude provides free medical care for children affected by cancer, operating almost exclusively on donations from these kinds of charity drives.

The donation is a unusual as it marks one of the few times Cawthon has done anything publicly. Despite Five Nights at Freddy's runaway success, the developer has been extremely reclusive. It's impossible to tell how well his games have sold given that Steam doesn't publish their sales data and NPD doesn't monitor digital games at all, but according to estimates from app tracking websites like Think Gaming, Five Nights at Freddy's pulls in more than $20,000 every day on the iPhone alone. Cawthon did not provide a reason for the very generous, non-anonymous donation.

Five Nights at Freddy's 3 launched earlier this month on Steam for $7.99.