Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 raised more than $2.6 million for charity
Six speedrunners completed a world-record PowerWash Simulator run in just over half an hour
Wintry speedrunning festival Awesome Games Done Quick 2023 finished yesterday, with runners managing to land $2,642,493 (£2,162,774) of donations in aid of Prevent Cancer. GDQ announced the $2.6 million figure on Twitter after the event concluded, and thanked all the runners and those who’d donated.
A number of speedruns throughout the week-long event smashed world records for their respective games and categories too, including PC runs of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge and my own personal GOTY from 2022, PowerWash Simulator. You can watch the AGDQ 2023’s record-setting No Soap PowerWash Simulator run below, and weep into your coffee at the sheer cleaning ability on display.
I’m particularly impressed that the six speedrunners tackling PowerWash’s grimy tasks weren’t scuppered by the curse of Friday the 13th, but their gymnastic proficiency at hosing down everything from vans to UFOs wasn't something that could be denied. This particular run was the 'all vehicles run' with runners explaining that a PowerWash Sim speedrun of every single location would take around eight hours of constant cleaning to complete.
The organisation’s next event, Summer Games Done Quick 2023, is happening a little earlier than usual. That’ll run between May 28th and June 4th and, unlike AGDQ 2023, it’s expected to be an in-person event.
In other GDQ news, Games Done Quick announced the departure of founder, owner, and managing director Mike Uyama from the organisation earlier this month, after 13 years of overseeing its roster of charity speedrunning events. Uyama’s last event was AGDQ 2023, and he’ll be replaced as owner and managing director by director of operations Matt Merkle. The original Games Done Quick event was hosted in Uyama’s mother’s basement, so it’s certainly come a long way in the intervening years. Games Done Quick has raised more than $41 million since then, and can now add another few million to that total.
While the event’s over, you can still watch archived runs from AGDQ 2023 over on YouTube and Twitch. There’s already plenty of PC runs lined up for the organisation's next charity speedrunning marathon, Frost Fatales, which runs from February 26th through March 5th.