Games Done Quick

Games Done Quick (GDQ) is a series of charity video game marathons in which speedrunners play through games at high level to raise money for charitable organizations.¹³¹⁴ The events are broadcast live on Twitch?, with individual runs uploaded afterward to a YouTube channel.³¹⁵ Its two flagship, semiannual events are Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ), held in January, and Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ), held in July.⁵⁶ Speedrunning, the practice at the heart of GDQ, involves completing a game as quickly as possible by any means available, including exploiting programming errors and glitches.⁴

The organization was founded in 2010 by Mike Uyama, and its first event, Classic Games Done Quick, was held in his mother’s basement as a small gathering of about twenty friends drawn from online and local speedrunning communities.⁶²² The group wanted to stream with a purpose rather than simply play games, which is where the charity element originated; streaming itself was still uncommon in 2010.⁶ That first event raised close to $11,000 for the humanitarian relief agency CARE over just two days, far exceeding Uyama’s hope of $2,000.⁴⁶ The strong response prompted Uyama to develop it into a proper event held in hotels, and it has grown steadily since.⁶ Originally organized under the Speed Demos Archive? community, which also ran the summer counterpart, GDQ has been handled by Games Done Quick, LLC, with Uyama as owner.⁴⁶

Format and events

Each flagship marathon runs 24 hours a day for about a week from a physical venue with a live studio audience, while momentum and donations gather online.³⁴ AGDQ has been hosted at the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport in Herndon, Virginia, and SGDQ has been held in cities including Minneapolis, Minnesota.³⁴⁸ The events draw thousands of attendees on site — GDQ averages over 3,000 people including staff, volunteers, runners, and spectators — while millions watch the Twitch stream, and millions more view the individual runs after they are uploaded to YouTube.⁶¹³ Registration for Summer Games Done Quick 2026, held July 5–11 in Minneapolis, was capped at 2,500 attendees.¹³¹⁷

Lineups span most gaming systems and eras, mixing classic titles with modern releases; the 2017 AGDQ schedule included Shovel Knight, Quake, Undertale, Dark Souls 3, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, among many others.⁹¹¹ The 2026 SGDQ schedule featured runs of games such as Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong-Quest, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Super Mario Odyssey, alongside newer titles like UFO 50 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.¹⁷ Individual segments are run under defined categories such as Any% (finishing as fast as possible by any means) and 100% (completing every objective).⁷¹⁷

Donations frequently fund bid incentives — bonus runs or in-game challenges that are scheduled only if fans donate enough to vote them in, with votes decided by how many donor dollars are allocated to each option.¹³ At SGDQ 2016, a $15,000 incentive to have speedrunner romscout complete Castlevania: Symphony of the Night blindfolded — one of the highest goals in the event — was met, with the t-shirt retailer The Yetee making a clinching donation of a little over $11,000 within a $20,000 overall contribution.¹¹⁰ Romscout, who had held world records in the game and a sighted personal best under 17 minutes, previously served as GDQ’s event director.¹¹⁰ Runs of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and other consoles are joined by tool-assisted speedruns (TAS), which use emulators and input files to achieve inhuman precision, such as the recurring TASBot segments in which a programmed bot performs feats impossible for a human.³⁷

The events feature roughly 150 runners and several hundred volunteers — around 200 to 250 — with roughly 30 contract staff paid in some form and a handful of full-time employees, three full-time and one nearly full-time as of January 2019.⁵⁶ Runners are effectively volunteers who pay their own way, arrange their own hotel rooms, and receive no compensation beyond a comped badge.⁵ Donations are processed through custom tracker software connected to PayPal so that money goes directly to the charity, which GDQ’s operators cite as central to donor trust.⁵⁶ GDQ is funded through a flat fee negotiated with the charity ahead of each event, Twitch ad revenue, and on-site registration rather than a percentage of donations, an arrangement the charities favor for its predictability.⁵⁶

On-site programming extends well beyond the stream, with an escape room, a 24-hour arcade and pinball area, casual and board game rooms, a music room, a Vendor Alley of artists and developers, and tournaments including a poker tournament that has run since 2024 and Classic NES Tetris.¹⁶ Director of operations Matt Merkle said in 2019 that GDQ was selling out tickets within 24 hours but intended to grow slowly to preserve its community atmosphere, and did not plan to become a game-announcement venue on the scale of E3.⁵⁶

Beyond the two flagship marathons, GDQ runs additional showcases including Frame Fatales, a community of women and femmes in speedrunning that produces the Frost Fatales and Flame Fatales events; GDQ Hotfix, a weekly and seasonal program spotlighting speedrunning communities; and Black in a Flash, a community for Black speedrunners behind the Back to Black and Juneteenth showcases.¹³ In 2026, Frost Fatales raised $147,647 for the National Women’s Law Center and Back to Black raised $53,232 for Race Forward.¹³ GDQ announced an overseas appearance at gamescom 2026 in Cologne, Germany, held August 28–30.¹³

Charities and fundraising

Over its history GDQ has partnered with several charities, most prominently the Prevent Cancer Foundation, the beneficiary of Awesome Games Done Quick, and Doctors Without Borders, the beneficiary of Summer Games Done Quick.¹³¹⁹ It has also raised money for the Organization for Autism Research and, at its first event, CARE.⁴ GDQ describes itself as the largest fundraising event globally for both the Prevent Cancer Foundation and Doctors Without Borders.¹³

Fundraising totals climbed steadily as the events gained exposure.⁵ AGDQ 2015 raised more than $1.55 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, a sum approaching the foundation’s total annual revenue at the time; one player proposed to his girlfriend live on air during a run of the Nintendo 64 game Mischief Makers before an audience of 140,000.⁴ AGDQ 2016 raised about $1.2 million, and AGDQ 2017 raised roughly $2.2 million, about $1 million more than the year before.⁷¹⁰ By January 2019, entering its ninth year, GDQ had raised nearly $17 million across all events, with both 2018 marathons individually surpassing $2 million.⁵⁶ As of July 2026, the cumulative donation total across all events exceeded $60.9 million, drawn from more than one million individual donations, with an average donation of $57.73 and a median of $25.²

GDQ’s growth has also brought scrutiny of its participants. In November 2018, the organization banned two runners slated to appear at the following AGDQ for making transphobic and racist remarks online.⁵⁶