Speedrunning Event Raises $1.7 Million, A New Record

This year's Summer Games Done Quick video game speedrunning event for charity has wrapped up, and it was a huge success. The event, which benefits Doctors Without Borders, brought in a total of $1,776,510.79 from 30,068 people. That works out to an average of $59.08 per user. The biggest donation was $20,300, according to the stats page.

$1.7 million is well ahead of the numbers for Summer Games Done Quick 2016, which came in at $1.29 million. For this year's event, viewers could chime in with their thoughts on what the streamers should do. For example, as Kotaku points out, people donated $2,740 just to have a speedrunner hold an Emil plushie in one hand while playing Nier: Automata with the other.

Summer Games Done Quick is the second leg of the event's annual streaming events, the first being Awesome Games Done Quick, which was held earlier in the year. That event brought in $2.2 million, which is more than a million dollars more than the previous year.

A wide variety of games were played by numerous people during Summer Games Done Quick, including EarthBound, Portal 2, Super Mario 64, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, and Halo: Combat Evolved. Below is the Halo re-play, while you can watch replays of the speedruns here on the Games Done Quick YouTube Channel.

Speedrunning is the process of playing through a game as quickly as possible. They are particularly fun and sometimes bewildering to watch because they require expert skill, lots of planning, and often the use of tricks.