·event
PLEX Aid for Haiti (2010)
Image: CCP Games · (c) CCP Games (used under CCP fan-content policy)
CCP's "PLEX Aid for Haiti" drive - five years after the founding tsunami campaign - converted player PLEX donations into $49,401 for Red Cross relief efforts following the catastrophic 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake.
PLEX Aid for Haiti (2010)
On 12 January 2010, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck Haiti just outside Port-au-Prince, killing somewhere between 100,000 and 316,000 people (estimates vary substantially), injuring roughly 300,000, and leaving over a million homeless. Buildings across the capital - including the Presidential Palace, the National Assembly, and the headquarters of the UN Stabilization Mission - collapsed.
CCP responded by reactivating the PLEX for GOOD programme that had lain dormant since the founding 2005 South East Asia tsunami drive. The drive, branded PLEX Aid for Haiti, was announced by CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson on 29 January 2010 and ran through 15 February 2010. Players donated PLEX via in-game contracts to the dedicated CCP donation character; for each PLEX received, CCP donated $15 (the 2010 PLEX dollar value) to the Red Cross for Haiti relief efforts.
The drive raised $49,401 - roughly double the founding 2005 drive's $25,326, and a strong signal that the programme had legs beyond the one-off tsunami response. It was the first PLEX for Good drive to attract mainstream gaming-press coverage at scale (Engadget, Ten Ton Hammer, GameSpot all ran pieces) and effectively reset the cadence: from this point onward, PLEX for Good would be a recurring response to major disasters rather than a one-time experiment.
For returning players: the donation mechanism in 2010 was raw in-game contracts to a CCP "Charity" donation character - a workflow that survived until the 2017 Lifeblood-era PLEX rework made PLEX a stackable item and moved donations into the PLEX vault. The end-user experience is much smoother now; the principle is identical.