Team Fortress 2 Hats Raise $300,000 For Japan Relief In One Week

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For all the folks out there who are tired of people being convinced that gamers are a bunch of half-blind misanthropes living in their parents’ basement, you’ve got another reason to prove them all sorts of wrong. You may remember last week, when we brought out the news that Team Fortress 2 was selling off a line of hats to raise money for Japan earthquake relief efforts? Well, the numbers are in for the first week, and the gamers scraped together fully $300,000 in hat money to help Japan out.

The hats were selling at three levels out at the Mann Co. store: the Humanitarian’s Hachimaki for $7.99, the Benefactor’s Kanmuri for just $19.99, and then the sudden price jump that is the Magnanimous Monarch hat for $99.99, with all proceeds set to go to the American Red Cross.

Sadly, no one seems interested in the breakdown–just how many hats were sold total, how many of each type, and so on–and this may be due to the fact that the main item is so big: gamers raised six figures for charity in a week in the midst of the worst economy since the Great Depression. And they did it all by selling hats for game characters. They will never see those hats, never own those hats, but their game characters will wear them instead.

I don’t mind telling you that this is really, really impressive stuff here, folks. It’s amazing that that kind of money got pumped into relief efforts and with nothing more to lure them in than a couple lines of code that makes a hat appear on a character’s head. But here’s the best part: they’re not even done yet. You’ve got another week and a half, roughly, to get your hands on one of these because the sale doesn’t stop until April 6th. So if you want to do your part and get some sweet new headgear for your Team Fortress character of choice–no matter what that character happens to be–you’ll still be able to get in on this.

What will the numbers be next week? Stick around!