ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

Halo dev 343 to donate microtransaction proceeds to NAACP

Halo dev 343 to donate microtransaction proceeds to NAACP

Microsoft's 343 Industries has said that it will be donating microtransactions from Halo 5: Guardians to the NAACP.

In a post on Twitter, the Halo developer said that it believed that black lives matter and that it would be giving 100 per cent of revenue from Halo 5 microtransactions between June 19th and July 19th to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The firm also said it is aware that it needs to crack down on hate speech within its games.

"We also know we have work to do in our own backyard to combat racist behaviour in our games," the company wrote. "Racism, bigotry and hate speech have no place in Halo and we will enforce our zero-tolerance policy with every means at our disposal.

"This isn't a problem that will be solved by a single donation or protest. True change will require continued, persistent focus until Black lives are truly treated as equal. 343 Industries remains committed to doing our part while also ensuring Halo remains an inclusive and positive universe for everyone."

343 is one of many games companies to voice its support of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. PC storefront Humble has set aside $1m to publish games from black creators, while fellow Microsoft studio Double Fine has donated $12,000 to anti-racist charities. Indie PC platform Itch.io has raised in excess of $2.3m for #BlackLivesMatter causes and Riot has committed $10m to minority-led studios and $1m to anti-racism causes, starting with The Innocence Project and ACLU.

The Halo maker also joins EA Sports and Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward in committing to tackle racism in its games.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.