League of Legends players raised a massive $6 million for Riot Games’ Social Impact Fund through its Dawnbringer Karma fundraiser. Now they get to choose where that money goes.
Riot Games announced the much-needed good news Friday after the Dawnbringer Karma fundraiser finished its first step by letting players purchase the limited-edition skin of in-game hero Karma along with other cosmetic items like chromas and emotes.
And while it’s not the first time money from League of Legends purchases have gone to a cause, this does mark the first time the players have a say in which cause. Voting is open now through April 23 within the League of Legends client. There, players can vote for one of three nonprofits in their region. When the voting period closes, the nonprofit with the most votes will receive 50% of its regional charity pool, and the other organizations will split the remaining regional charity pool funds. Riot Games guaranteed each charity involved a minimum grant of $10,000.
“We’re going to let players have agency and vote on which specific local cause matters most to them,” Jeffrey Burrell, Riot’s head of corporate social responsibility, told Digital Trends. “The Riot Games Social Impact fund allows us to use these in-game fundraisers to essentially give agency back to the players. Rather than just saying, ‘We’re going to support this one cause,’ we’ve done a lot of research to understand what players care about specifically in their region.”
So far, the Riot Games Social Impact fund has partnered with 46 nonprofits throughout the world. This gives its worldwide fan base the opportunity to better find groups they recognize or feel more passionately about.
“As a global organization, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to serve players from diverse backgrounds around the world, and we feel an innate responsibility to operate at a hyper-local level,” Dylan Jadeja, president of Riot Games, said in a release. “We believe that leveraging our platform to give players agency in choosing the causes that matter most to their local communities is incredibly meaningful, and hope to continue finding opportunities to empower our players to give back in ways that resonate with them.”
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.