Overwatch Pink Mercy Skin for Charity

I'm pretty happy to see the positive reception that Blizzard is getting for running a charity event to raise money for breast cancer.

We believe in creating a better world, and as part of that mission we’ve teamed up with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to release a special charity skin in Overwatch: Pink Mercy!

Available for purchase in-game and online through May 21, all sales of this limited-time legendary skin will benefit BCRF and their mission to end breast cancer.

(For those who don't play the game, Mercy is the main healer in Overwatch, and in the backstory, she was a gifted doctor and scientist.)

I generally don't spend money on in-game cosmetic items^[1] (and I really avoid pay-to-play and pay-to-win games, where spending money is required to skip countdown timers or get items you need to be competitive).

But, I'm all in on this sort of thing. The money goes to charity, and as a bonus, you get to wear the skin in the game to further raise awareness for the cause. Given the male dominated culture of video games, the focus on issues like this in-game can only be a good thing.

Some folks are suggesting that you should be able to buy this sort of charity skin for all the characters, but I prefer the idea of focusing these sorts of events on individual characters; having no choice to make aside from "buy or not buy?" is easy, but if I could buy it for every one of the ~30 characters it would start to feel like I was being pressured to spend an unreasonable amount of money.

Perhaps over time we'll see more charity events focused on the other characters, too. I'll be happy to donate to those as well!