Overwatch's Pink Mercy skin helped set a new record for breast cancer research donations

Back in early May, Blizzard debuted a new type of skin in Overwatch dubbed "Pink Mercy". Unlike other skins which are unlocked via the game's loot boxes, Pink Mercy was a direct purchase for $14.99 / £12.79, with 100% of the purchase price going to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Today, Blizzard revealed just how much money the special edition skin raised: a whopping $12.7 million.

In a news post, Blizzard notes that this is the largest donation by a corporate partner in the BCRF's 25-year history, which is pretty dang cool. Always nice to see gaming be a force for good. In addition to money raised via sales of the Pink Mercy skin and Pink Mercy t-shirts, the Overwatch community donated an additional $103,000 across 14 Overwatch charity Twitch streams.

Blizzard also commended its players for several pieces of Pink Mercy fan art, and even a cosplay creation by RinnieRiot. You can see all of the highlighted fan creations over on the official news post - I'm partial to the art drawn by Requits myself.

The window of opportunity for you to grab your own Pink Mercy skin or Pink Mercy t-shirt may have closed, but given the success of this event, I imagine we'll see more special skins and/or charity donation drives in the future. And in the meantime, you can check out VICKISIGH, the community artist who designed the Pink Mercy t-shirts.

Oh, and if you were taking a break from Overwatch and this is the first update you've heard of in awhile, you might want to consider jumping back in: the game has a maniacal hamster piloting a mech now.

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Sam Prell

Sam is a former News Editor here at GamesRadar. His expert words have appeared on many of the web's well-known gaming sites, including Joystiq, Penny Arcade, Destructoid, and G4 Media, among others. Sam has a serious soft spot for MOBAs, MMOs, and emo music. Forever a farm boy, forever a '90s kid.