Twitch will make a donation of $1 million to the AbleGamers Foundation, a charity that has promoted accessibility in the gaming and tech and created custom setups for disabled gamers for over 15 years. The foundation also provides consultations for developers looking to make their games more accessible to the disabled, something that has been in increasing demand in as the medium has matured and become more popular.
AbleGamers has become one of the more prominent charities in the video game industry, having helped in deg Twitch itself has been in hot water lately for its seemingly endless tide of takedowns across the platform, but it has just fairly won itself some serious public goodwill with its latest charitable move.
During a recent GlitchCon stream with AbleGamers COO Steven Spohn, Twitch revealed that it would be donating $1 million directly to the charity. The announcement was made by renowned streamer DrLupo, who thanked Spohn and his organization for the "incredibly important work you do for us in the Twitch community and gamers in general." Spohn was stunned and a little choked up; he went on to say that this kind of money would be able to change the lives of thousands of disabled gamers. Lupo also made a point of saying that there's a lot of "different energies" across social media in regards to Twitch right now, but wanted to "remind people that the goal here is gaming" and continuing the work of bringing all kinds of people into the fold.
Back in September, Spohn celebrated his 40th birthday with a particular tweet. In it, he communicated his birthday wish of raising $1 million for AbleGamers and ensuring that the foundation would outlive him. There were many generous donations made to his cause, but Twitch's donation is by far the largest and pushes the total far beyond that goal. In fact, it is the biggest single donation that AbleGamers has ever received in its history.
The cynical view of this would be that Twitch was simply looking for a way to drum up some good PR in light of the ongoing debacle with its streamers, and to an extent, that may be true. But a million dollars is nothing to scoff at, especially when it's going towards such an impactful organization. Regardless of the motive, it's heartwarming to know that such a donation will benefit AbleGamers well into the future and effectively make its COO's dream come true.
Source: Steven Spohn