Ghost of Tsushima players help raise $260,000 to restore the island's real-life shrine

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The original goal was less than $50,000

Ghost of Tsushima
(Image credit: Sony)

Ghost of Tsushima players have helped to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to help restore a real-life shrine on Tsushima Island in Japan. 

On September 7 2020, a typhoon hit the island, destroying the Torii gate situated at the shrine. In November, one of the shrine's priests, Yuichi Hirayama, launched a crowdfunding page with the aim of raising 5,000,000 Yen ($47,500). The crowdfunding effort to rebuild a Torii gate at Watatsumi Shrine, in the centre of the island, smashed its original goal with help from the game's community. As Hirayama later wrote, however, the fund "received a great deal of support from the players of the Ghost of Tsushima game." Overall, more than 2,000 people donated more than $27,000,000 Yen, or around $260,000, more than 500% of the original goal.

The shrine itself doesn't appear in the game, which was released in July last year, but according to VGC, the site's Twitter account often posts about the game and its portrayal of Tsushima Island. Ghost of Tsushima was an immediate hit, selling more than 2.4 million copies in its opening days and becoming PlayStation's most successful original IP launch, beating out the record set by Horizon Zero Dawn in 2017. 

Ali Jones
Ali Jones
Managing Editor, News

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.