If you are a law-abiding citizen, you are most likely sat at home wondering what to do with yourself. Many of us used to do this prior to COVID-19, but now it seems we are finding ways to be productive in our procrastination.
Popular video gaming streaming site ‘Twitch’ has hosted a marathon streaming charity broadcast in aid of the World Health Organisation. The 12-hour stream had appearances from famous YouTubers such as Lindsey Sterling, Joe Jonas, John Legend and Charlie Puth.
Twitch’s logo.
The viewership of the live stream peaked at 135,000 viewers with a collective watch time of over 1.2 million hours. The stream helped raise 2.8 million dollars and Twitch have confirmed that this charity stream is just the start of the events they plan on doing over the course of this tough period.
While we are all stuck indoors, video games have seemingly become the go-to detergent of boredom. High-profile football players such as Sergio Aguero have jumped on the bandwagon recently, starting Twitch streams of their own. The Manchester City striker streams FIFA every day.
However, Twitch isn’t the only platform aiding the Coronavirus fight. Youtubers are also aiding charity, as popular gamer ‘Jacksepticeye’, Sean McLoughlin, helped raise $650,000 on April 6th for the World Health organisation. That takes his total of charitable donations up to $4 million over the last three years.
On the week of Twitch’s charity stream, they managed to hit their record viewership of 4 million concurrent viewers. It is clear to see that gaming, and streaming are more popular than ever in lockdown.
If you too want to join the cause in fighting off Coronavirus through the means of gaming, sign up for a Twitch account at www.Twitch.tv and click on their ‘Charity live streams’ section. Alternatively, you can donate straight to the World Health Organisation at https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/donate
These are tough times. More than ever, we need to stay unified and gaming has taken these values and turned them into something incredibly productive. The charity on show is not limited to coronavirus as well. Twitch and YouTube constantly churn out money in their charity streams every year for all different types of things. It seems almost ironic that gaming was once demonised, yet now we sing its praises, but it is for good reason. Hopefully these platforms keep up their fantastic work and hopefully the virus isn’t around for too long. Then we can all get outside.
Or maybe stay in and watch more Twitch.