Staff from EA DICE, Mediatonic, SEGA Europe, Unit 2, Fanatical and many other games industry companies will be joining hundreds of gamers and gaming communities from around the world in supporting SpecialEffect’s annual GameBlast weekend on 26-28 February.
With ‘in person’ fundraising continuing to be severely restricted because of COVID-19, GameBlast is taking on particular importance this year as an event that is almost perfectly suited to these locked-down times. Rather than organising office-based activities as in previous years, participating companies have been encouraging staff to support the charity’s work in levelling the playing field for gamers with physical disabilities by gaming and streaming from home, wherever in the world they may be!
As just one example, teams from DICE in Sweden, EA Galway in Ireland, and Criterion in England will be streaming from Friday 26 February. The EA DICE stream (details at http://bit.ly/3qoZ6hw) will feature an interview with SpecialEffect CEO Dr Mick Donegan, plus chat and gameplay with Paul, one of the gamers who has benefitted from their help.
A representative from EA DICE, said: “We are really excited to once again be part of GameBlast getting to do what we love – play games! SpecialEffect is a fantastic cause and we’re looking forward to raising funds, while having fun and talking to other development teams!”
SpecialEffect’s Tom Donegan, commented: “We’re immensely grateful to the industry for getting behind GameBlast21 in such a big way. This is always such an important event for us, not only because of the funds raised but also the way in which it brings the whole gaming community together. This year it is particularly vital for us as we’ve lost so many other avenues of financial support as a result of the pandemic, while demand for our services continues to rise. There’s still time to sign up and enjoy what promises to be an amazing weekend!”
In addition to studio streams and gaming challenges, several other companies, including Insert Coin Clothing, Hyper X, Nobel Chairs, Fierce PC and Big Potato games are showing their support for GameBlast this year by creating some awesome limited-edition products and running giveaways to reward people for taking part.
Streams from the event will feature on the Twitch front page over the course of the weekend.
Sign up to GameBlast21 here: https://www.gameblast.org.uk
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