Playing FarmVille & Raising $1 Million For Japan Disaster Relief

March 18, 2011

This is extremely impressive. In under 48 hours the users of Zynga’s FarmVille, CityVille, and FrontierVille have donated more than $1 million in aid for victims of the natural disasters in Japan.

The gaming company began adding virtual goods to many of their games the other day for users to purchase, the proceeds which in turn are then donated to various charities helping in the Japan disaster relief efforts. A button has also been added to Words With Friends to allow donations, and all Zynga’s Facebook games will accept donations via its Zbar.

This is one of the greatest uses of social media gaming I’ve ever seen. It’s nice to see companies doing what they can to help and in a manner that incorporates their user base. These type of efforts should be much more common and certainly should be emulated by others.

I take my hat off to Zynga for this brilliant way to let people send aid to help those in need. Possibly after everything is taken care of in Japan they’ll continue this with other charities.