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Summer Games Done Quick 2024 raises over $2.5M as GDQ passes $50M raised all-time

Games Done Quick hit a major milestone during an eventful SGDQ marathon week.

Ozzie Mejia

July 7, 2024 12:50 AM

Games Done Quick (Photo by ZanDamascus)

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Summer Games Done Quick 2024 helped bring in the month of July in the best way by raising money for charity. After an exciting seven-day marathon in Minnesota, MN, the Games Done Quick team raised a final total of $2,546,295 for Doctors Without Borders. However, that's not the only big number that the team has to hang its hat on this year.

Summer Games Done Quick 2024's final total surpasses the $2.5 million raised during January's Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 event. The team was able to do so in part because of one final donation incentive. By setting the incentive total at the exact number raised during AGDQ 2024, the Super Mario RPG remake run was extended to include a climactic final battle with 3D Culex, a post-story boss battle and arguably the most difficult fight in the game. The SGDQ 2024 total is also higher than the $2.2 million raised for last year's Summer Games Done Quick, which was held unusually early during Memorial Day week. This year's final total includes direct donations, Twitch subscriptions, Twitch Bits, purchases through GDQ partners like The Yetee and Fangamer, and purchases of the SGDQ 2024 Humble Bundle.

Like Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 earlier this year, Summer Games Done Quick 2024 featured several showcases that went outside the normal parameters of traditional speedrunning. There were some GDQ staples on display, such as the return of the crowd favorite Super Metroid four-person race on Saturday. However, there were also some different runs, like JSR_'s dog Peanut Butter playing a game of Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball, the debut of Alan Wake 2 with a live dance number, and a Super Mario Maker 2 race featuring curated troll levels dedicated to showing off the more broken side of the 2019 Shacknews Game of the Year.

The most newsworthy story to come out of SGDQ wasn't exactly about the week's marathon itself, but about Games Done Quick's efforts throughout its history since 2010. During a hitless run of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Games Done Quick announced that it passed $50 million raised all-time across all GDQ events. This includes the twice-yearly main GDQ events, the all-woman Frame Fatales marathon weeks, and side events like Games Done Quick Express from TwitchCon.

The Finale 😌#SGDQ2024 pic.twitter.com/9yaX21CGg2

— Games Done Quick @ #SGDQ2024 (@GamesDoneQuick) July 7, 2024

Up next for Games Done Quick, the women of the speedrunning world will return for another round of online runs. Flame Fatales will run from August 18-24 and already has a full schedule laid out. After that, Awesome Games Done Quick 2025 will return to Pittsburgh, PA for the week of January 5-12. Next year's Summer Games Done Quick has an official window, as well. It'll be back on the week of July 6-13 with a site yet to be determined. To check out any runs you missed, you can visit Games Done Quick on YouTube and the Games Done Quick website.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?