A character skin in 'Overwatch' has helped raise $12.7 million for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, simply by players buying the skin for the videogame.
The announcement made by Blizzard yesterday also added that the donation was the largest single sum made by a corporation for the BCRF this year, with 100% of proceeds from the sale of the character skin going to the fund. The character skin for Mercy cost $15, with the option to buy only being made available from May 8th to May 21st. While a limited edition t-shirt was sold for $30, the vast majority of the donations were made up from players buying the character skin.
'Overwatch' is considered to be one of the most popular squad-based first-person shooters on the market today, with an estimated 40 million active players across PC, Xbox One and PlayStation4. Microtransactions, however, have come under close scrutiny in the past year, with games like 'Battlefront II' radically altering their microtransaction policies in light of backlash from players.
While most microtransactions can give players an edge over competitors, character skins merely change the appearance of the player and have no effect beyond that. Moreover, the rarer the skin is, the better - and given how this particular character skin was available for just two weeks, it makes sense that players snapped it up quickly.
