ZEvent: the success story of a french charity event that the media didn't take seriously at first
Those who follow me know that the ZEvent is happening this week-end (because I've been posting non-stop about it). But to help everyone understand what this is and how insane it actually is, here's the story of the biggest charity event of Twitch!
It starts in 2016, with the "Projet Avengers" by the belgian streamer Athene. It's an emergency charity event organized each time a catastrophy happens (one that hasn't enough attention from media etc). In France, the streamer ZeratoR joins the event with 15 other french streamers by doing a 3 days livestream... in ZeratoR's living room. They gathered 170 770€.
Inspired by that, ZeratoR and his associate Dach created their own charity event, the ZEvent. In 2017 they rented a house, put all their equipement in the basement and livestreamed at 30 streamers for 3 days for La Croix-Rouge. They did it through power shortage, internet shortage,... and the media which mostly didn't give much attention to it. I mean, it was the first year so it's normal media were not gonna rush to them without knowing what they were doing. And back then, "the gamers" were even more misunderstood than now: "you're telling me that people watch them play video games and gives them money? It's not a real job" and "Look at those people in their 30s with no job playing video games in a basement" Depiste it all, they collected more than 500k€.
In 2018 they organized it again, this time for Médecins Sans Frontières with 38 streamers and they rented a huge room. They also tried reaching for the media and the majority answered with "Meh, we kinda talked about it last year, so it's not really interesting". Which is a bit absurd, like "Oh yeah, you're collecting money for a charity? Yeah, I don't think you need exposure to make that work. Good luck!" But suddenly, everything was going crazy and people realized that they were gonna break the 1M barrier. The journalists who had refused to cover the event suddenly decided it could be nice to be a part of this. They were kindly told that this is not how this works, as there was quite a lot of planning to do before letting journalists enter the building. They ended with 1 094 731€, many tears and the feeling they proved "gamer" was not a synonym for "lazy-ass".
In 2019 the ZEvent was now very famous in the charity world, so they received more than 400 requests from charities. Finally, they chose l'Institut Pasteur and they reunited 55 streamers. Journalists were all covering the event and along with it, the tone changed. They were actually trying to understand the streaming world, they were encouraging people to go donate too and they were giving amazing coverage of the event. To everybody's surprise, they gathered 3 509 878€, more than the triple of the previous year with the same amount of time.
2020 was the year of every problems. First with the Covid, everybody feared it wouldn't be possible to do it. They finally ended renting a whole hotel, asked everybody to do a covid test and then the streamers couldn't leave the building during the whole event and no one else could enter. But a few days before the event, a bunch of streamers had the covid or had family member who caught it. The organizers decided to do an hybrid version of the event: the streamers who couldn't come participated online, from their home. Then, the charity chosen created a few polemics, as Amnesty International didn't convince everybody. Some were saying they were too political, some that they were helping terrorists, etc. But ZEvent held its ground. In the background, there were rumors 2020 would be the year the event would finally flop. The 54 streamers didn't waver, kept the hard work, even organized a game with the real host of a famous french TV game. And 55 hours later, they had reached 5 724 377€, breaking every possible record, surprising the charity, the journalists, the fans and the whole ZEvent crew themselves.
"If the ZEvent survived a year like 2020 with such brilliant results, I'm pretty sure nothing will ever be able to stop it" —ZeratoR
The legend of the ZEvent is still going strong and the year 2021 is already full of promises. Once again, fear the French for we are determined.
