PUBG is the latest game to offer players a chance to send aid to Australia for the country's ongoing bushfire relief efforts. A new cosmetic for the battle royale progenitor's iconic frying pans is now available. The skin was designed by community member and Twitter hero, Shitty Watercolour, whose famous paintings aren't as bad as their username would have you believe.
The PUBG Twitter account announced 100% of the profits from sales of the skin "will be donated to help communities across Australia with immediate bushfire relief and future support." The art is an original work for the game and features two of the country's most instantly recognizable animals, a koala bear and a kangaroo. As they hug, a PUBG-style first aid kit sits in front of them.
100% of the profit raised from the Australia Fire Relief - Pan skin will be donated to help communities across Australia with immediate bushfire relief and future support.Thanks to community artist @SWatercolour for kindly contributing his original art. pic.twitter.com/tILABk07eDFebruary 19, 2020
The charity drive is a wonderful one as the bushfires have sadly fallen out of the mainstream news cycle but continue to rage in some areas of Down Under. PUBG joins a long list of games and game creators to step up and promote bushfire charity work like this. We've seen recently Bethesda put on livestreams, Kojima Productions has sold merch, Destiny has sold T-shirts, Call of Duty refocused an earlier cosmetic to directly benefit the inundated country, while Ubisoft sent a bunch of money to Australia directly, as it couldn't justify the time needed to craft new merch or in-game items while Australia needed all the help it could get as fast it it could get it.
It's likely PUBG won't be the last game to announce some sort of charity drive like this, and we'll be sure to round up more stories like this if and when more companies use their platform for good like this.
Naughty Dog recently got in on the charity efforts too, with livestreams benefitting bushfire relief.
