An incredible $43,690 donation to Awesome Games Done Quick 2025 doubles as the most expensive nerd joke I've seen on the internet

Awesome Games Done Quick, as it has most years, has raised an absolutely boggling amount of money for charity—about $2.5 million, all told, in support of the Prevent Cancer Foundation. 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, according to the site's own donation tracker, 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 can see clipped here, arrived during a race between 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, by the way—it's part of what makes them so special. Like a dog playing baseball, or speedrunning Crazy Taxi with a live band.

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 over on the event's Twitch channel. 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.