An incredible $43,690 donation to Awesome Games Done Quick 2025 doubles as the most expensive nerd j

, as it has most years, [[link]] has raised an absolutely boggling amount of money for charity—about $2.5 million, all told, in support of the . It's always lovely seeing games being used as an unrepentant force for good, a solid source of laughs and, in this case, both.

A user by the name of Dr. Mecha Kitten donated $43,690—more than my yearly salary—to Awesome Games Done Quick. This is, , the most cash that a single person has given to the cause in one go—the Humble Bundle still takes the cake for highest overall donation at $51,578, but given that's, you know, a company? I'm willing to cut Mecha Kitten some slack.

The donation, which you , arrived during a speedrunners Vert and Storster to beat Super Mario World via a "96 exit run", where both players needed to find all 96 exits to every different level (the game has several secret exit doors).

The best part? Aside from a tremendously generous lump sum, Dr. Mecha Kitten's donation is also a shitpost. See, during Mario speedruns at the event, the audience began to yell whenever boos showed up on-screen because, y'know, ghosts are scary. This kind of charity-induced mania isn't at all uncommon for events like GDQ, [[link]] by the way—it's part of what makes them so special. Like a , or .

As mentioned in the donation itself, the numbers 43690 are 0xAAAA in hexadecimal code—as in, "aaaa!" like the noise you might make when you stub your toe, or see a ghost.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2025 has now finished, as it ran from January 5 to January 12, but you can take a look at all the highlights . [[link]] Meanwhile, Summer Games Done Quick is slated to kick off July 6 this year, and I'm sure the unstoppable generosity of the gaming public—and their ability to meme with said generosity—is going to hold strong.