Playing the Support class is a thankless job and Blizzard did just that but in real life. The studio helped by selling the Overwatch Pink Mercy skin for each platform back in May in order to raise money for the Breast Cancer Awareness Foundation. The proceeds ended up topping off at $12.7 million in total. And today, Blizzard revealed how that money is getting divided up over three critical programs.
The Precision Prevention Initiative is the first program that Blizzard helped launch, according to its website. As its name implies, it assists researchers in creating test and tools to catch breast cancer at an earlier stage through “improve screenings and diagnostics.” This will even target those who are genetically predisposed to getting breast cancer. It will gather a “think tank” of breast cancer research specialists to write up the Requests for Proposals, which are grants for studies that look at breast cancer prevention. The initiative will begin later this month and end in March.
The Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium Award is the ssecond program and will help launch five new clinical trials this year. As opposed to the previous program aimed at prevention, this will help accelerate treatments for those who have already been diagnosed. These clinical trials use multiple different medical disciplines that all work together to help everyone understand the biology behind breast cancer so they can work through new treatment strategies.
The last program is actually 25 programs since the rest of the donations will be spread across the 25 different grants. These grants cover seven different research fields: treatment, tumor biology, biomarker discovery, disparities, metastasis, hereditary risk, and early detection. All of these studies will span six continents, eight countries, and 10 U.S. states and aim to bring humanity one step closer to finding a cure for breast cancer.
The Overwatch Pink Mercy skin was revealed in May 2018 as a part of Blizzard’s campaign to “try to make a difference.” In addition to the skin, the developer also coordinated sponsored streams and sold real-world clothing from May 8 to May 21. In July, Blizzard revealed that it had raised $12.7 million, blowing past its minimum contribution of $250,000. This update coincides with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is every October.
