Microsoft’s Xbox is allowing players to play games to help the CDC as video game companies start to get on board with the ongoing #stayathome campaign.
In a series of moves in both the US and the UK, it appears that video games companies are starting to press the message home to gamers to stay at home in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Now, this might be preaching to the choir for many of us but it looks like Xbox and several games publishers have taken things a step further.
Points Mean PPE
Microsoft has just updated the Xbox home screen, allowing players in the United States to donate their Microsoft Points to the CDC Foundation, in order to help in the fight against the current pandemic. For US gamers, you’ll need to be a Microsoft Rewards Member, which allows gamers to earn points based on purchasing games, searching using Bing, carrying out quest style tasks and more. The full details are at the Microsoft Rewards website and the conversion rate comes in at 1000 points to $1.
Getting The Message
While Xbox is helping the CDC, over in the UK a number of major titles are helping cement the #stayathome message to gamers. Form today, many adventurers in some of the world’s biggest titles will see messages promoting the tag line “Stay Home Save Lives” in various forms. Big budget titles such as Sniper Elite 4, Dirt Rally 2 are joined by mobile and casual games such as Candy Crush and Farm Heroes Saga in the effort. This is a joint effort by several publishers and the UK government to help stop the spread of coronavirus.
In addition, Blizzard Activision has donated over 230 digital poster advertising spaces in London which would otherwise be urging us to log on and keep crushing for similar public health messages. While there’s plenty more to go for many of us, take the hint and stay at home if you can and continue to cut your way through Doom Eternal or farm the hell out of those bells in Animal Crossing. Stay home, save lives.
