Extra Life 2013 Raises Over $3.6 mil

With the help of many passionate gamers, Extra Life 2013 turned out to be a huge success. This great program helps to save the lives of children, while the participants get to play video games. Their slogan goes: “Play Games. Heal Kids.” That’s exactly what Extra Life does. In these efforts, Extra Life 2013 soared over $3.6 million in donations, and all proceeds go to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

How Extra Life Works

The way that Extra Life works is you can sign up here to participate in the long hours of gaming, and by doing so, you can ask friends to be your sponsors. In the long run, you end up playing video games for 25 hours and you raise money to help kids. Although this year’s Extra Life has passed, you’ll be able to participate next year, and help support Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Anyone can take part in Extra Life, and GameSkinny’s Staff Editor Katy Hollingsworth participated this year, and was successful in her mission to rally together the gaming community.

When donating to Extra Life, all proceeds go to help the kids, and the donation is tax-deductible. When the money is brought to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, it helps cure kids of many ailments such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, and much more. The money is very helpful since Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals treat the children every year regardless of their family’s ability to pay.

Reaching over $3.6 Million

This year’s Extra Life participants and donors raised over $3.6 million for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, while the Extra Life website faced numerous DDoS attacks throughout the 25 hour marathon of games.

As the event took place at 8 AM, November 2nd, and ended 8 AM, November 3rd, Extra Life’s website went down for many hours while they were undergoing a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack multiple times. This means as their website was down they couldn’t accept donations from people as the marathon was taking place.

“May whoever did this lose their shoes and have every child in their neighborhood strew Legos in their path forever,”

Although many people were distraught by these actions, the 32,110 participants continued strongly through these difficulties. As viewers were watching them through Twitch, they donated money as soon as they could after the DDoSing, and Extra Life was able to get above last year’s total of $2 mil, raising even more money for the kids.

I’m very proud to see that video gaming is going above and beyond the personal enjoyment, but being focused on ways that help people in the long run. I’ll proudly be participating next year, and rallying as many people as I can to join me.

“Play Games. Heal Kids.”