AGDQ 2020 breaks Games Done Quick’s all-time donation record

A speedrunning event raised millions of dollars for charity last week.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2020, part of the Games Done Quick series, hosts several speedrunning marathons each year as a charity drive. The most recent saw a host of top speedrunners use every trick, glitch, and skip to beat games in the fastest possible times. The week-long stream also features races, contests, and raffles.

The latest installment of the event brought in a total of $3,131,475, breaking the previous donation record of $3,039,596 which was set at Summer Games Done Quick 2019. All donations went to the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

“Thank you so much to everyone involved in this event, everyone that donated, and to all our runners! Nearly 100,000 over our previous record,” Games Done Quick said on Twitter.

In a video posted to Twitter, one member of the Prevent Cancer Foundation thanked Games Done Quick for their work.

“It’s amazing, the impact is going to be felt for decades, probably long after our lifetimes so thank you so much,” they said.

Games Done Quick features a number of different titles from across gaming history, with AGDQ 2020 featuring titles such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Dark Souls, and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the Nintendo Switch.

AGDQ finds creative ways to drive donations with speedrunning

Donors can choose to have their money put towards a number of different incentives. These can range from doing special types of speed runs, to having runners do specific tasks during their run, to changing the name of the player’s avatar. 

Some of the incentives for the event this year included $60,000 for the runner of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to demonstrate all the glitches and ways to bypass huge sections of the game not normally included in a “no glitch” speedrun. Another was a $25,000 incentive for the Final Fantasy VII runner to fight one of the hardest optional bosses.

There are also various raffles, with prizes ranging from a PlayStation 4 bundle pack to a custom-made 1:1 scale model of an unlit bonfire from Dark Souls.

The speedrunners themselves are masters of the games they choose to play, drilling their favorites to perfection and then experimenting with different ways to shave off more time. They typically do their own commentary while playing at AGDQ, often accompanied by a few others to tell newcomers how they are achieving these seemingly impossible times. 

The next Games Done Quick event will be Summer Games Done Quick. which will take place in Bloomington, Minnesota. SGDQ is scheduled to run from June 21 to 28. Previous installments of SGDQ have seen money go to Doctors Without Borders.