Bungie to Gamers: “Play Halo 3, Help Haiti”

Over the last couple of days, we’ve seen many creative ways to help the victims of the Haiti Earthquake. Companies like Apple, Google and Intel have dedicated their resources to helping the relief efforts.

Now Bungie, developer of the Halo series, has stepped forward with an interesting fundraising effort.

Bungie announced on their blog that for Wednesday and Thursday of the coming week, they will be providing a special red heart emblem for players to wear in-game in both Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST. They intend to track the number of players wearing this emblem over the course of these two days and make a $100 donation to the American Red Cross for every 1000 gamers that wear the heart.

They intend to keep donating, up to a total of  $77,000.

The developer is also selling special edition tee shirts in their store to help the relief effort. Bungie says that 100% of the proceeds from these shirt sales will also go to the American Red Cross. In addition, Bungie will donate 100% of the proceeds from their store from now until the end of February to the American Red Cross.

While this method of providing relief might not be as widely used as text message donation has been, it should still be very successful. Bungie’s last disaster relief effort, the “Fight the Flood” campaign during Hurricane Katrina, raised over $175,000 from tee shirt sales alone. Given that there were more than 730,000 unique gamertags playing Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST in the last 24 hours, and the dedication of Halo’s fan base, Bungie’s campaign is shaping up to be a successful one.

Via Bungie