Runescape Lets Players Donate In-Game Gold to Charity

Cognimancer

Imperial Intelligence
Jun 13, 2012
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Runescape Lets Players Donate In-Game Gold to Charity



Runescape's new Well of Goodwill turns players' digital currency into real-world donations to several charities.

Have you ever found yourself playing an MMO, sitting at the level cap with vast fortunes of gold and nothing to spend it on? Runescape developer Jagex is certainly familiar with the problem - Runescape's economy has been pretty unbalanced lately, with a lot of money in circulation but nothing to buy. To that end, Jagex is implementing a new system to improve the economy while helping a number of good causes. Runescape players can donate in-game gold and items to the Well of Goodwill, where their digital wealth will be converted into real-world dollars that Jagex will donate to a handful of charities.

From today until November 30, players can find the Well of Goodwill just south of the Grand Exchange. For every 10 million gold donated by players, Jagex donates a dollar to charity. That may seem like a low conversion rate, but there's plenty of in-game money to go around: at time of writing over 65 billion gold has been donated by players. Players can also donate bonds, a premium currency sold by Jagex for $5 a pop, directly to the Well, and items donated to the Well are converted to a gold value based on the Grand Exchange's current rates. Altogether the donations have raised over $10,000 for charity, just on day one.

Donations are paid by Jagex to the Willow Foundation, Special Effect, Action for Kids, GamesAid, and the Internet Watch Foundation.

Source: Runescape [http://www.runescape.com/c=Yu752hjkL6g/charity/well_of_goodwill]

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hazabaza1

Want Skyrim. Want. Do want.
Nov 26, 2008
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Huh. Neat.
Good to see stuff like this happening, may as well help out with the ludicrous amount of money some people have.
 

omega 616

Elite Member
May 1, 2009
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For every 10 mil they donate a buck, 65 bil has been donated.... Good way to get cash out the system though.

That 65 billion was probably just one guy, the wealth some players have is on par with Americas debt!
 

gigastar

Insert one-liner here.
Sep 13, 2010
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omega 616 said:
For every 10 mil they donate a buck, 65 bil has been donated.... Good way to get cash out the system though.

That 65 billion was probably just one guy, the wealth some players have is on par with Americas debt!
One guy i was quite good friends with until i left left RS a couple of years ago, he had items worth a total of about 300 billion GP.

And he was just a grinder. That says nothing about the merchants.
 

scw55

New member
Nov 18, 2009
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It's good that it'll flatten inflation.

The people who don't donate, will effectively become richer.
 

Quazimofo

New member
Aug 30, 2010
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At first I thought the 10 million to 1 was a it poor of a conversion rate, and then I remembered that players get so much wealth they have to store them in items since game engine limitations keep you from having more than 20 billion or so in cash in the bank.

Yeah, I'll not be surprised if this fundraiser can bring in some substantial returns for the charities. When I played, even just grinding up mining and runecrafting in the mid 40s-50s, (like 7 years ago when I was out of school or not playing more fun games) I had a couple million in the bank and about a million or so in assets (mined materials and my pickaxe and the like).
 

Quazimofo

New member
Aug 30, 2010
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gigastar said:
omega 616 said:
For every 10 mil they donate a buck, 65 bil has been donated.... Good way to get cash out the system though.

That 65 billion was probably just one guy, the wealth some players have is on par with Americas debt!
One guy i was quite good friends with until i left left RS a couple of years ago, he had items worth a total of about 300 billion GP.

And he was just a grinder. That says nothing about the merchants.
If I calculated correctly, Chessy018 had over 1 trillion in items before her account got hacked, and 6 stacks of max cash (2 billion ish, whatever 3^32-1 is). She was the wealthiest at her peak according to the interwebz, but I've no doubt there were others of comparable wealth.
 

Jamous

New member
Apr 14, 2009
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Excellent! A place I can donate my meagre leftover account to. I shall get on that.
 

Billy D Williams

New member
Jul 8, 2013
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They get rid of the massive inflation problem AND donate to charity at the same time? Don't play the game anymore but still I gotta say cudos Jagex.
 

misg

New member
Apr 13, 2013
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I'm impressed good on them, it's creative, and it's supporting community outside of the game.