The UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has teamed up with video game companies in the fight against coronavirus.
The Government’s ‘Stay At Home, Save Lives’ messaging will appear in games from the likes of Activision Blizzard King (Candy Crush Saga and other mobile games), Codemasters (DiRT Rally 2.0), Rebellion (on game landing pages and in comic book ad space) and more.
The news came before the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was admitted to intensive care this evening, as his Covid-19 symptoms worsened.
Activision Blizzard King has also donated more than 230 ‘digital poster’ advertising spaces in London, where they would normally advertise their own products, to be used for public health messaging instead.
Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden, said: “It is absolutely vital that we all follow the simple government advice to stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives.
“I’m delighted to see the UK’s brilliant video games industry stepping up to strongly reinforce this message to gamers across the UK.”
Oliver Dowden, Culture Secretary
Toby Evan-Jones, VP Business Development at British-based business Codemasters, commented: “At Codemasters we came to realise that technology within our games, which enables the remote updating of banners within the virtual environment, could be repurposed to assist with the Coronavirus communication effort.
“This week, through collaboration with Bidstack Group PLC (providers of the ad-replacement infrastructure), we began delivering a version of Public Health England’s ‘Stay Home Save Lives’ message into DiRT Rally 2.0. It’s fantastic to see conversations already being sparked amongst our community.”
UK games industry body TIGA encouraged other games businesses to get involved with the initiative and help promote the messages to their customers.
See more esports and gaming headlines around covid-19 here.
Last weekend a few London Royal Ravens players gave their CoD charity tournament winnings to the NHS.
Any company wishing to support the fight against coronavirus through in-game messaging and other initiatives can contact the DCMS on [email protected]
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
