Summer Games Done Quick is being held in person after nearly two years of COVID-based restrictions that forced the speedrunning charity organization to virtually host competitions.
Summer Games Done Quick is currently streaming live from its home at the DoubleTree Hilton in Bloomington, Minnesota. This marks the first time since 2020 that the event (and its sister event Awesome Games Done Quick) has hosted a live audience. The event is being streamed live on Twitch, and ends on July 3 with a run of From Software’s Elden Ring.
“It has been an immense morale boost to see everyone again in person,” Matt Merkle, director of Operations for Games Done Quick, told PCMag. “It was pretty stressful preparing for the event, after being online only for over two years, but we were all focused on making it happen.”
Merkle added that the organization consulted medical professionals to ensure every attendee’s safety while at the event.
The charity stream began in 2011 when co-founder and events director Mike Uyama asked his mother to borrow the house for three days while he and his friends speedran games online. Uyama hoped to host the event at MAGFest, but tech issues caused the organization to shuffle players from the hotel to his home. That first year, the group raised $10,000 for Switzerland-based Care International. After 12 years, Games Done Quick has raised more than $30 million for various charities, including Doctors Without Borders and the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
GDQ also acts as a stage for smaller streamers to present their skill in their games of choice. Speedrunners spend hours replaying the same segments over and over to their audiences, and GDQ is where they can display the fruits of their labor. According to SocialBlade, Fallout runner Tomatoanus rarely broke 1,000 followers per month on his Twitch channel, but he gained 6,354 followers after his Fallout Anthology run at AGDQ 2020.
While GDQ raises enough money to support whole research projects and expeditions for charities, it’s not without its own set of controversies.
In 2019, Speedrunner ConnorAce submitted a video of himself setting the ClusterTruck world record, so he could speedrun the game live at GDQ 2019. However, the run was proven to be a fake by many members of the speedrunning community. When confronted with the evidence, ConnorAce admitted that he spliced together his best attempts at each level.
In 2020, GDQ hosted a Spanish runner called Luzbelheim for a relay-race speedrun of Final Fantasy 8. Audience members quickly pointed out that Luzbelheim was a self described anti-feminist and a vocal supporter of VOX, the extreme, right-wing, Spanish political party. On Twitter, Luzbelheim frequently posts anti-feminist memes and support for the VOX party, an organization that frequently espouses Islamophobic beliefs.
For more, Kotaku’s Heather Alexandria has a piece going into detail of GDQ’s controversies through the years.
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