You may recall our interview with Matt Conn (Episode 5 of the Super Podcast Action Committee) of GaymerCon, the first-ever gaming event that caters to the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) community set to take place in San Francisco in 2013.

On July 25 we reported that Gamers Against Bigotry had suffered a number of attacks and lost 1500 pledges to its cause. Relenting slightly, the group decided to launch an IndieGoGo campaign to raise awareness and $700 to fund ongoing operations. With a few hours left to go the organizers are happy to report that the campaign has managed to generate $3,252 so far.

UK-based games industry-driven charity GamesAid has opened up the nomination process to allow for voting on which charities it will support in its next round of funding. To be eligible, charities must be registered in the UK and focus on helping children and young adults in some way. Of course these charities will need be be game-related in some way as well. Organizations also have to have a turnover of £5m (roughly $7.85 million) or less and running costs of no more than 30 percent. Nominations opened up today and will end on August 13.

The Indie Gala 7 has launched today, offering seven games and with 2 unlocks to be revealed in the second week. The pay-what-you-want game bundle offers Steam-compatible versions of such games as Rig'n'Roll, Space Rangers, Reign, and one unlocked game. Those consumers willing to cough up more than $5.00 will also get Death to Spies, Death to Spies: Moment of Truth, King's Bounty, UFO, and another (currently secret) unlocked game.

World of Warcraft players helped Blizzard raise $330,000 for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The funds are the result of a charity auction that saw the sale of some retired WOW server hardware put up by Blizzard on eBay earlier this year.

InXile Entertainment announced that Wasteland 2 will include the original 1987 CRPG Wasteland for free. The original RPG is considered the godfather of post apocalyptic games and a sort-of spiritual successor to another game series made by Interplay: Fallout. This free offering would not have been possible without the kindness of EA towards InXile Entertainment because EA owns the rights to the title.

Martine Spaans has joined Gramble, the cross-platform "Social Gaming for Good" company, as its new Chief Communications Officer. Spaans will focus on game licensing while evangelizing the good things Gramble does to the independent developer community. Martine is an industry veteran who has handled online licensing, marketing and content management campaigns for companies such as Ubisoft, Spil Games and Blue Byte Software. The company chose Spaans to push the benefits of the platform to developers of all stripes.

Indie game developers in Colorado have teamed up to create a 48 hour game jam to help support those affected by the Colorado wild fires called BlazeJam 2012. The charitable effort is being spearheaded by Cerulean Games, with the support of Glass Bottom Games and others.

Beginning Friday, June 22, a group of dedicated gamers in Lafayette, Indiana will host the fifth annual Mario Marathon fundraiser to benefit the Child’s Play Charity. The group has been doing this since 2008, and has managed to raise over $242,000 for Child's Play to-date.

At DreamHack Summer 2012, it was announced that Bachir "Athene" Boumaaza has reached an incredible milestone: he has raised $1,000,000 in the name of Save The Children, a global charity that helps feed and educate children in poor countries around the globe.

With only a few more hours to go, the Humble Indie Bundle V is inching towards $5 million dollars. As of this writing the total number of payments made is at $4,969,788.10 on the sale of 584,349 bundle purchases. The pay-what-you-want DRM free bundle is doing so well because of the games in it and the price people are willing to pay for them: the average price currently stands at $8.50.

The AbleGamers Foundation will demonstrate the AbleGamers’ Accessibility Arcade at Abilities Expo at the Schaumburg Convention Center in Chicago on June 29 to July 1. In its 30th year, the Abilities Expo focuses on improving the lives of people with disabilities, their families, caregivers and healthcare professionals across the country. The Expo features three days of workshops, demonstrations and displays of cutting-edge products and services.

Former Radical Entertainment employee Brian Vidovic is trying to launch the EXP Restaurant + Bar in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was well on his way in doing so - having already raised $31,737 of its $50,000 goal via IndieGoGo - but ran into some serious red tape.

If you didn't think you had a good reason to put down some money on Humble Bundle V, organizers are adding a little more sweetener to the mix - three brand name games to anyone willing to pay more than the average bundle price. The pay-what-you-want DRM free bundle was already offering a decent line-up of titles including Bastion, LIMBO, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, Psychonauts, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The soundtracks for all of the above listed games are also included.

Ed Fleming, founder of the Main Campus Camps, let us know that he has launched a Kickstarter to provide some much needed funding to buy new technology for the summer video game design camp, along with some funding to give "in-need kids" free access to the program. Main Campus Camps hosts video game and science & technology summer day camps for children ages 5 - 16 years-old at Villanova University, just outside of Philadelphia.

The Humble Indie Bundle V is alive and kicking and already off to a good start with 66,000 bundles sold so far (as of this writing) and has earned nearly half a million dollars. The pay-what-you-want DRM free bundle offers some really decent games including Bastion, LIMBO, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, Psychonauts, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. 

To get Bastion you will have to pay more than the current average price of $7.12. The soundtracks for all of the above listed games are also includedin  the bundle in both FLAC and MP3 formats.

Game-related charity Get-Well Gamers announced that it will put on a charity during E3 Expo week in Los Angeles, with the proceeds going towards its continued good works of bringing video game-related goodness to sick children. The event, "Comics for Kids," will feature L.A. comedians Rob Silva, Richard Villa, Sebastian Cetina, and Brett Riley doing their best to make you laugh for one night. 

The latest Indie Gala Bundle has chosen a worthy cause to give proceeds to - the Ablegamers Foundation. The Ablegamers Foundation is featured alongside the Red Cross as one of the two charities supported by the Indie Gala V bundle. 

The organizers of Benefit Evil passed along a note to let us know that they will be hosting a special 24-hour-long event at the end of July (21 and 22). In a nutshell the Benefit Evil Crew will spend 24 hours playing various board games to benefit charity. Those antics will be broadcast via a live stream, just like its other annual event. They need your input to help them figure out which board games they should play so if you have any decent ones in mind, stop by their official Facebook page and let them know.

Indie Royale has launched a special game bundle called the All-Charity Pack. The pay-what-you-want DRM-free bundle features four indie games and three chiptune albums/EPs, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to four charities. The charities benefiting from this bundle includes UNICEF's Haiti aid, Amnesty International, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and ActionAid.

Zach Wigal from Gamers Outreach sits down with another fine game-related charity called The Beautiful People's Club to talk about their efforts to raise money in the fight against the ugliest thing on planet earth: cancer. The group has an event planned for May 19 that you can find out more about at the link above. Zach's interview with Jason Fishman and Martin Brinkley of The beautiful People's Club begins now.  

Prototype 2 creators Radical Entertainment is working with the BC Cancer Foundation to raise money for the fight against cancer as part of the Ride to Conquer Cancer event. The team taking part in the Ride to Conquer Cancer, Radical Riders, hopes to raise $50,000 in donations to support the organization and to further research against the disease. Prototype 2 producer Jon Lim and lead animator Gerald Sombilonare are both taking part in the charity ride.

This weekend at the After Hours Gaming League Grand Finals held at Red Bull’s North American headquarters in Santa Monica, healthcare software company Epic Systems was triumphant over IBM StarCraft II Championship. The charity they were playing for, Doctors Without Borders, will be given a $5,000 check.

Employees from 30 corporations, including Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Twitter, and Zynga, are getting ready for Season Two of the After Hours Gaming League (AHGL). Microsoft is the reigning champion, having bested everyone else in the last season, but this year they found themselves utterly defeated. After four months of hard-fought battles, the StarCraft II Championship sees healthcare software company and newcomer Epic Systems battle IBM in the finals. In the League of Legends Championship, Amazon.com is set to compete against Electronic Arts.

University of Tennessee students in Knoxville want to blow sh*t up for charity. On April 20 and 21, gamers can get together and play their favorite video games to show off their skills and benefit a good cause: cancer research. The Apartment Residence Tenants’ Association (ARTA) will host "Frag for a Cure," with some kind support from companies like Sony, EA, and Ubisoft. The event is not limited to UT students - anyone may participate.

Josh Campbell, vice president of ARTA, said that he was inspired to organize the event because of some personal experiences.

At a recent Google-sponsored Big Tent event in Mountainview, Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of and executive director of Code for America, participated in a "fire side" chat with Google's SVP, David Drummond, about her various initiatives related to using technology to solve public sector problems and civic life in general.

We like the work that the fine folks at Gamers Outreach does for the benefit of U.S. military personnel deployed overseas, so it makes sense that we share a recent TEDx EMU talk delivered by Zach Wigal entitled "Video Games - Helping Others Level Up." Zach writes about his experience delivering the presentation on his web site.

I find this fascinating.  Having just crossed the million dollar mile marker, the Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter was just updated to say that if it reaches $1.5 million, developer Harebrained Schemes will build a special mission exclusive to backers as a thank you.  A thoughtful gesture for sure but the comments show that backers are overwhelmingly against the idea.

Despite being shut down prematurely by the charity it was raising funds for because, they said "people thought they were paying money to change the ending of Mass Effect 3," the Retake Mass Effect 3 Child's Play event was a rousing success. The protest charity drive managed to rake in over $80,000. Despite the assertions of Child's Play, who had asked the Retake people to pull the plug for the aforementioned reason, very few people asked for a refund. In other words, people knew where the money was going to - children.

Thirty students from the University of New Mexico have created a video game to benefit a charity for children with diabetes. The students developed Alloy, a video game that lets players create robots out of scrap metal in a barren wasteland. The created bots are then used to find power crystals that power other robots. The crystals are wanted by others, so the robots have to engage in come "capture the flag" style gameplay in order to secure the crystals.