"Can a game create a better world? We believe it can"
iOS game (THRED) donates everything to buy medicine to stop mother-to-baby HIV transmission.
"Can a game create a better world?" asks the (THRED) video. "We believe it can."
(THRED) is a free game for iOS that donates all money raised from in-app purchases (after taxes) to The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The game is made by BitMonster, the studio that made Lili, and is run by Lee Perry who used to work on Gears of War at Epic.
In the game you control a little spacecraft that races forward through a striped tube that twists and turns. You need to zoom forwards collecting white blobs while avoiding black and red nasties.
Lee Perry wrote to Eurogamer and said he was inspired by Rez, Osmos and flOW. There's music in (THRED) by superstar DJ Tiesto as well as DJ Poet and Tokimonsta.
One of the game's many in-app purchases costs $209.99.
"Why that number? That's pretty excessive, right?" wrote Perry. "As it turns out, about $205 is what it takes to provide an HIV+ expectant mother with retro-antivirals through her entire pregnancy and breastfeeding term. $209.99 is literally an in-app purchase that means a child is likely to live without HIV because of that purchase. We think that's amazingly powerful."
Those medications can apparently give a newborn a 98 per cent chance of being born HIV free.
Coca Cola and (RED) masterminded and presumably paid for the project.