If you were playing a bit of word association and someone said “Zynga”, “charity” is probably not the first thing you'd come up with. But there's actually a whole division of the company using the immense popularity of some of the core Zynga games for good.
Last year, for example, Zynga held a campaign throughout December called “Oh, What Fun!” to coincide with the holiday season. During the campaign, all of the money players spent on certain in-game purchases in Zynga games like CityVille and Bubble Safari went straight to Toys for Tots, a charity that gives gifts to some of the less-fortunate children in the States.
The campaign made $745,000, which works out at around 60,000 toys and books for those children.
It's a pretty astonishing amount to be raised through cheap in-game purchases, but then some of Zynga's most popular games have a very wide reach. For example, FarmVille players alone purchased 101,409 of these special in-game items, in this case a “Cheer Ewe Up Horse”.
Whatever people might say about Zynga, it's nice to see the company continuing to do its bit for charity even when struck by financial troubles. Does this improve your opinion at all?
