Demi Lovato is getting gamified for a good cause.
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Starting on Tuesday (Dec. 3), the pop star will appear as an animated version of herself in the mobile video game Subway Surfers. Available as an in-app purchase, Lovato’s character will be available in the game through Jan. 5, 2025.
All of the profits from Lovato’s character will be donated to certified environmental projects, including the Hongera Project, which restores forests impacted by logging, agriculture, development and firewood collection in Kenya and New Zealand’s WAI Wanaka, which works to improve ecosystem health, reverse biodiversity loss and maintain healthy water. Watch Lovato talk about the project (and plants) below.
A representative for the initiative is unable to share projections for how much the collaboration with Lovato might raise, but says funds raised by a similar project from J Balvin and Subway Surfers in November of 2023 raised enough money to offset over 2,000 tons of carbon emissions over the campaign’s three-week run. This number, a rep for the project says, is equivalent to the carbon emissions created by a concert with 100,000 attendees.
Both the Lovato and Balvin characters are projects form Planet Play, which works with video game studios to create solutions for climate issues within the global video game industry and player community. The Lovato collab is part of Planet Play’s just-launched Make Green Tuesday Moves campaign, which is raising money for environmental projects through limited run in-app items across a suite of games.
The company reports that Balvin’s playable character was the most successful in-app purchase in Subway Surfers‘ history. During the three weeks Balvin was in the game, players aggregated three years of collective run time with his character.
