Child's Play refuses charity money from Atlantica Online

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Child's Play refuses charity money from Atlantica Online

Posted Dec 31st 2009 3:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Culture, MMO

While it's always a good thing to launch a drive to raise money for charity, the devil is in the details. In this case, the details on how the fantasy MMO Atlantica Online tried to raise money for the Child's Play children's hospital charity has caused the organization to refuse the money offered to the group.

According to a story from our sister site Massively, Atlantica Online's publisher NDoors offered a grab bag of rare in-game items for players to purchase for the real world amount of about $40. The publisher stated that 5 percent of those sales would go to Child's Play. However, a number of players felt that small amount (which equals just $2 of the grab bag's total price) was too small compared to the revenue that would be taken by the game's publishers.

After getting emails from players complaining about how the charity drive was run, Child's Play has apparently refused to take any money raised via the Atlantica Online grab bag. The publisher has responded with their own statement where they blame "the negativity of certain players around the nature of the donation." They claim they will find other charities to work with although no specific ones are mentioned.

Tags: atlantica-online, childs-play, ndoors, ndoors-interactive

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

I don't know how charities work, but I think it's pretty idiotic that they refused the money. I also don't see what's so horribly wrong what NDoors did. I've seen plenty of concerts, and other outlets give very small percentages to a certain charity (I've seen donations as little as a dollar from buying a 50+ dollar concert ticket), and no one complained.

People get butt hurt for the most minute things nowadays. Posted at 5:05PM on Dec 31st 2009 by thatguyrom

Well, when throwing a concert, you have tons of operating expenses. AO was already well covered for those costs with their normal item mall, so taking 98% of the revenue from something people are buying for charity is just incredibly greedy. Posted at 5:34PM on Dec 31st 2009 by johnfordcoley

Sorry, 95%. Posted at 5:35PM on Dec 31st 2009 by johnfordcoley

I think this is incredibly stupid. First off, I don't think it was greedy for a company to try and make money. NDoors is not obligated to give any money to CHARITY. But they decided that 5% of what they were going to sell anyways, would be donated to Child's Play. First off, you have the option to buy that item or not buy that item. If you want to donate to Child's Play directly, YOU HAVE THE OPTION TO DO THAT. Think about it for a minute.Posted at 8:04PM on Dec 31st 2009 by ron

I'm not sure how they advertise those items but if they try to make charity the main reason to buy those items... then this is wrong.
But if they only mention the charity and explain the 5% then it's ok.Posted at 4:30AM on Jan 1st 2010 by ahac

you cant be WRONG when donating money, period. child's play needs to get their heads out their asses with this ethics bs and accept everything they can.Posted at 12:13AM on Jan 2nd 2010 by acme

I think the issue here is that some players felt like they were misled to believe that a significant portion of the purchase price was for the charity and that NDoors used the idea of a donation to Child's Play to drive additional revenue for themselves.

I couldn't find any information about the items purchased or details about the downloads from NDoors, so the above is only speculation, but would be a legitimate reason to refuse the money and essentially order a cease and desist to NDoors regarding the use of the Child's Play logo and links.Posted at 5:21PM on Jan 2nd 2010 by TaXXuS

If you want to make a significant donation to a charity, go acquire the necessary details and bloody MAKE ONE. This is just stupid and as it has already been pointed out, there are routinely cases where some portion of the proceeds from whatever will go towards some charitable cause -- its not as if players don't already pay money for junk in game anyhow. It's a simple gesture and Child's Play ought to be cuffed in the head for turning their nose up at it.Posted at 2:29AM on Jan 10th 2010 by drktranquillity