Video game company launches a bidding war for charity
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is hosting a different kind of battle royale: a charity auction.
Mediatonic, the company behind Fall Guys, has been getting bombarded with requests from brands to create in-game skins of their properties.
So on August 17, the official Fall Guys Twitter account declared the Battle of Brands. It’s an ongoing auction for Special Effect, a U.K.-based charity organization which provides specialized gaming equipment to players with disabilities. The brand that pledges to donate the most amount of money to Special Effect by August 31 will have an in-game skin made in its honor.
Within minutes, Cooler Master started off the auction with a bid of $286.
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A few hours later, G2 Esports made things serious with a $130,003 bid. BeastCoast countered with $133,769, locking the two companies into a spirited bid-off where they already shared some preliminary designs of their hypothetical Fall Guy avatars.
Then Ninja swooped in with his own Fall Guy mock-up (artist credit to Astroloxy) and a $200,000 bid.
As of August 19, the current highest bid is G2 Esports with $330,003.
It’s understandable why brands are so eager to have a presence in Fall Guys. In just one week, the game has sold 2 million copies and has 23 million hours watched on Twitch. The game’s appeal is not just in its accessibility (all you do is run, grab and jump) but also in its insidiousness.
Fall Guys is a battle royale and its cutthroat format has elicited a variety of dramatic responses, the most common of which has been howling rage. The schadenfreude that viewers get from watching their favorite players fail has made it a wildly popular title for streaming.
Now Mediatonic is trolling gamers in a different sort of battle royale: Only one brand will get the coveted in-game skin in its image. Which will it be?
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If you enjoyed this story, check out this article on Fall Guys making streamers rage.
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