There’s some nice news out of the U.K. this week, as Oxfordshire-based charity organization SpecialEffect announced today that it has raised over £300k (~$392k USD) to fund its charitable work during its recent One Special Day fundraising event.
This is a big deal because SpecialEffect’s mission in life is to help people with disabilities play and enjoy video games.
To that end, the One Special Day (which was, incidentally, September 29th) fundraising effort was supported by studios and companies across the game industry, encompassing everyone from 505 Games to Double Fine to Unity to Zynga.
SpecialEffect had set a fundraising target of £100k, and with that thoroughly surpassed it has announced that the next One Special Day will take place next year on the 28th of September.
Devs curious to learn more about SpecialEffect’s efforts and how to support them can do so via the organization’s website.
Update: As of January 26, 2018, final tallies show that SpecialEffect raised a grand total of £446k (~$635k) during the 2017 fundraising event.
“The money raised from One Special Day is a huge financial boost to SpecialEffect,” said SpecialEffect CEO and founder Dr. Mick Donegan. “It will enable us to take on the extra staff we need staff to help even more severely disabled people all over the world to play the games they love.”
The organization says that the total funds raised will, among other things, allow it to hire two new clinical staff members to bolster its team of occupational therapists and technology specialists and also help pay for updates to its accessible games room.