Haiti Earthquake: Zynga Games Raising Millions For Relief

Game developer Zynga has raised over $1 million for Haiti relief efforts through special virtual products available through their Farmville and Mafia Wars games. These funds are being donated to the UN World Food Programme to help bring critical food and water supplies to Haiti.

Special virtual products, such as white corn for Farmville and Haitian drums in Mafia Wars, are available.

"The devastation in Haiti is unimaginable, and anything we or our users can do is tiny compared to the utter loss for this nation," said Mark Pincus, Zynga's CEO.

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Comments

[just curious]

11:00 AM on 01/16/2010

I am a regular Zynga player, and post to their forums. There's been a lot of discussion on the forums about this, because it's unclear how much money is actually being donated by Zynga per virtual item purchased.

The issue is you can't directly purchase an item. For example, in Farmville, you must first purchase FarmBucks, which you then trade in for virtual items. The more you buy, the cheaper the deal - $5 for 25 FarmBucks, up to $40 for 240 FarmBucks. Further complicating things, Zynga hands out the occasional FarmBuck when a player levels up. No one knows exactly how much 25 FarmBucks is worth (the cost of the virtual farm item), so no one know what Zynga is donating.

Many people have asked Zynga to publicly state exactly how much money is being donated per item, and they have either ignored the question, or deleted the post. I would love to buy 1, 2, or even 50 virtual items, but I have no idea how much of that cash is going to the charity. To further complicate things, their previous Haiti charity drive only had a stated 50% donation, and to a charity (Fatem) with huge overhead and murky financial statements.

I believe Zynga wants to do the right thing, but until I get a clearer picture of how their donation program works, I am personally making all my cash donations directly to the charity of my choice.

[Cheryl Barnes-Neff]

09:05 PM on 01/16/2010

I understand the concerns, so to be on the safe side, i added to my farmville cash through paypal and added the memo "donation to Haiti relief", then bought my white corn. Hopefully, that helped make it clear. I do believe Znyga has already donated a large amount of money to Haiti through Seeds for Change, I'm sure they will be able to do the same for this tragedy. It's one small way to help.

[sinope]

08:36 AM on 01/16/2010

Only 1/2 the proceeds go to charity

[cliffhammond]

09:11 PM on 01/15/2010

My neighbor just planted "White Corn" in Farmville. I'm waiting for my watermelon crop to come in then I'm going to plant too. Farmville now has 2 million players. It's fun and simple and a great social network where you can meet friends from all over the world. I happened to have tapped into a fun group of folks from Poland who are fun loving and generous beyond belief. My other "neighbors" are from Iran, Egypt, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, England, Mexico, Italy, Spain, the Philippines and France. It's amazing how well we all get along when we're out farming together and exchanging gifts. Brings out the inner child in us all. May we live in peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2W4-0qUdHY

We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So lets start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving out own lives
its true we'll make a better day
Just you and me

[Ccouncil]

02:45 AM on 01/16/2010

Zynga poker is not bad either, I've donated there and to the redcross.