Phasmophobia Players Raise $230,000 for the American Heart Association, More Than Double Last Year

By CriticalPixel · 2026-11-08

Phasmophobia is a game about four people walking into a dark building with a flashlight and a bad plan. This year its community walked into a charity drive instead and came back with more than $230,000 for the American Heart Association. Kinetic Games announced the final number for Ghost Hunts for Hearts on November 6, and it more than doubles the roughly $100,000 the same community raised last year. For a co-op horror game that is still sitting in early access, that is a strange and genuinely good headline.

How the drive actually worked

The structure was simple enough to copy and nobody does. Ghost Hunts for Hearts ran from October 26 to November 2, and more than 500 streamers signed up to fundraise, which Eurogamer reports as the biggest turnout yet for a creator fundraiser run through Heart Liive, the American Heart Association's streaming arm. Participating streamers could hand out an event exclusive Advocate ID Card and Badge to viewers as a Twitch Drop, and Kinetic set a $200,000 target with an animated version of that set as the carrot for clearing it. The target fell on November 1.

Kinetic did not sit on the number until it looked tidy. The event announcement on Kinetic's own site laid out the plan back in October: last year's total was over $100,000, the studio wanted to go bigger, and any registered streamer could distribute the Advocate card as a drop during event week. It also promised a secret fundraising goal that would be unveiled on October 26, then unlock an animated version of the set for every player if the community cleared it. That is a small piece of design work, and it turned a donation link into a group objective with a visible finish line.

The pacing shows up in the studio's own posts. The official Phasmophobia account confirmed $110,000 on October 29, with the $200,000 goal still ahead. By November 1 it was announcing the goal had been crossed, and on November 3 it reminded players to log in before November 15 to claim the animated card and badge. Five days between the halfway mark and the target is a fast finish for a fundraiser with no publisher money behind it. The reward stayed free, cosmetic and time limited, which is how you get people to care without selling them anything.

Ghost Hunts for Hearts event key art from Kinetic Games

A good month in a rough year

Worth putting this next to the rest of Kinetic's year, because it has not been smooth. Phasmophobia's 1.0 launch slipped out of 2026 and into late 2027 after the studio said it would prioritise quality over speed following a rocky reception to its Player Character Update, which Kinetic ended up apologising for. The Steam store page still lists a game in early access since September 2020, with a Very Positive score across roughly 686,800 reviews and recent reviews at 86 percent across about 2,559. A community that stays this warm through a delayed 1.0 and an update apology is not an accident.

The growth is the part worth staring at. Going from a little over $100,000 to more than $230,000 in twelve months is not a rounding error or a nice press release, it is a 130 percent jump in a year when the game itself was not shipping its biggest promised feature. Kinetic also launched a publishing arm this year, with its first signed game, the starship job sim Contact Protocol, due in spring 2027. Charitable goodwill does not pay for that, but it does buy something harder to price, which is a player base willing to defend a studio during a delay.

What the reaction looks like

Reaction is easy to measure and harder to characterise. The milestone posts on the official account pulled around a thousand likes each, and the animated reward claim stays open until November 15, so the drive still has a tail. Outside the studio's own channels the story has been picked up by Eurogamer and little else at the time of writing, so treat any claim of a wider groundswell with caution. What is visible is a community that showed up, cleared the target, and went back to hunting ghosts for the rest of the week.

American Heart Association Advocate ID card and badge art from Kinetic Games

The CriticalPixel take

This is the version of live service that deserves the word community. Kinetic shipped a divisive character update, took the criticism, pushed 1.0 to late 2027, and then pointed its audience at heart disease research instead of a twenty dollar skin bundle. Nobody had to buy anything to take part. The reward was a card and a badge. The total still doubled. Compare that to the usual seasonal treadmill and it is not close. If more studios spent one week a year treating players like adults with money to give away, the whole conversation around this business would be less exhausting.

What comes next

The final total sits above $230,000, or around £173,000, with more than 500 creators involved and Heart Liive running point on the streaming side. Phasmophobia is out in early access on PC, PS5, PS VR2 and Xbox Series X and S, with a Switch 2 version announced but still undated, and 1.0 now aimed at late 2027. The animated Advocate card and badge can be claimed by logging in before November 15, after which the cosmetics go away. Kinetic has not said whether Ghost Hunts for Hearts returns next year, but the bar it just set is the interesting part.