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Oliver Brandt is a Contributing Pop Culture Writer based in Tasmania, Australia. Their focus is reporting on video games, film, and TV. They have extensive knowledge of video game history and communities both in Australia and abroad, animated films and television shows, and international cinema. Oliver joined Newsweek in 2024 and has previously worked at Men’s Journal, Parade, and more. They are a graduate of Curtin University. You can get in touch with Oliver by emailing o.brandt@newsweek.com. You can find them on X and Bluesky @chocobalt. Languages: English.
Contributing Pop Culture Writer
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Every year, two massive speedrunning events take place, with Awesome Games Done Quick typically being held in the Winter, and Summer Games Done Quick being held in the Summer. The latter took place last week, and it was a rousing success, raising millions of dollars for charity.
Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ) took place from July 6 to July 13, 2025, with a week-long, 24-hour a day stream featuring a host of popular speedrunners playing dozens of games with viewers encouraged to donate to support Doctors Without Borders. It was a wildly successful event, too, with viewers donating a massive $2,436,614 to the charity throughout the week.
Speedrunning is a competitive type of gameplay that sees players trying to complete a video game as fast as they possibly can. Typically, these players – called speedrunners or runners – will stream their attempts to viewers on Twitch and YouTube, acting as both a form of entertainment for the viewers and as a publicly verifiable record of the attempt for the runner.
Hundreds of games and runners were on display during SGDQ, with popular fan favorites like Sonic the Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda, and Super Mario Bros mixed in with more obscure games like Sega Marine Fishing. The event was capped off with a glitchless run of Deltarune, the latest game from Toby Fox, creator of Undertale, which had multiple “bid wars” in which viewers could donate money to a specific choice that can be made by the runner in the game.
While the almost $2.5 million raised during this year’s stream is certainly admirable, it’s far from the biggest success story in Games Done Quick history. 2022’s SGDQ brought in over $3 million, while 2022’s AGDQ raised $3.44 million dollars for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
To date, the event has raised over $55 million for charity, most of which has gone to Doctors Without Borders, the primary recipient for SGDQ, and Prevent Cancer Foundation, the primary recipient for AGDQ. Games Done Quick has also held a series of smaller marathon events for other charities, such as Direct Relief, the National Women’s Law Center, and The Trevor Project, among many others.
