While Ori and the Will of the Wisps centers around the health of a virtual environment, creators behind the Ori franchise partnered with Skybound Games and iam8bit in order to help save the real-world’s rainforests last month. To accomplish this lofty goal, Moon Studios, the development team behind the beloved platformers, aimed to donate a percentage of its game’s week-long Switch sales to the Rainforest Trust and iam8bit promised to contribute a large amount to the nonprofit regardless of the game’s sales numbers.
This initiative kicked off with a video from the iam8bit team in which co-owner Jon Gibson described the unified teams’ overall goals and highlighted the Rainforest Trust’s work. He explains that the partnership had a choice between pursuing a more typical marketing route or attempting something new. The hope was that by donating to the environmentalist organization, Ori and the Will of the Wisps would not only get attention but the team could help protect the places that the game used as inspiration. Five percent of Ori and the Will of the Wisps’ Switch proceeds from an entire week in mid-December were promised to the Rainforest Trust but iam8bit pledged to give the charity $25,000 regardless of how well the game sold.
According to a report from GameSpot, the Ori developers, iam8bit, and Skybound games were able to contribute more than $58,000 to the Rainforest Trust. This number grants some insight into how well the game is selling on Nintendo’s console given that the group intended to make a donation derived from Ori and the Will of the Wisps’ sales on the Switch. The final total equals five percent of a week’s worth of sales on the platform, including those from the eShop, physical units, and the Switch collector’s editions sold specially by iam8bit. With this sizable contribution, the Rainforest Trust will reportedly be able to safeguard 29,000 acres of land.
However, it is not only the future of this habitat that is looking bright as Moon Studios begins to look at what to do next. Big dreams like getting the main protagonist of the series into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate are probably not in the cards, but the developers have announced some other interesting pursuits. During the summer, Moon Studios partnered up with Private Division. The publisher owned by Take-Two Interactive seems to have teamed up with the Ori developers to make an action-RPG, though the details on the project are scarce.
It is always interesting when games manage to make a positive impact on the real world and this donation from the Ori and the Will of the Wisps team seems to have done that. Perhaps the studio will be able to do something equally creative for its next project.
Source: GameSpot