In recognition of Veterans Day 2024, World of Warships started a campaign to help the real-life veterans—by providing them with a companion of their own. An ongoing charity drive is benefitting K9s for Warriors, which provides service dogs to veterans, and development studio Wargaming itself donated plenty to bring it past its $20,000 initial goal.
K9s for Warriors is a non-profit organization that “provides highly-trained Service Dogs to military Veterans suffering from PTSD, traumatic brain injury and/or military sexual trauma.” Such service dogs are explicitly trained from puppyhood for medical purposes, though they can be very costly. For PTSD and trauma, it can mean waking its partner from night terrors, bringing medication, or leading to an exit in the midst of a panic/anxiety attack; for TBIs, they can physically guide and navigate spaces as well. (As it’s a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, all donations can be counted on donors’ taxes.)
We are incredibly proud and overwhelmed by the World of Warships community’s support for our K9s for Warriors fundraising campaign. We exceeded our initial goal of $20,000 by raising a total of $23,545.56! You can check out the campaign status here: https://t.co/8ZZNuZGBaG pic.twitter.com/ptt8iP5Uol
— World of Warships (@WorldofWarships) January 16, 2025
According to the campaign page for K9s for Warriors, Wargaming provided an initial $10,000 booster amount, and an extra $10,000 “last month.” The latter donation is likely in part due waiting out a hashtag campaign run by Wargaming, where the developers would donate $5 for every dog picture and story with World of Warships tagged and the hashtag #Ships4Pups (which would be great to scroll through if X weren’t broken). However, it seems like not that many contributions were made, so it’s just out of the bottom of the devs’ heart and budget.
It’s pretty common for developers and event sponsors to chip in large amounts to campaigns they’re involved with (looking at you, Yetee). It can seem like an easy tax write-off, but regardless, $20,000 isn’t an amount to wag a finger—or tail—at.
It’s especially notable because that’s approximately how much a fully-trained, ADA-compliant medical task service dog can cost, on the lower end. (No, there’s no such thing as a “registry” nor a “certificate” you’d need to pay for, by the way.) Basically, they paid for one veteran’s service dog, and that can be a literal lifesaver.
The DevStrike.net “forum community” also donated $2,600 in October, so we can likely count those among the remaining sum as player donations.