Valve Pays For Australia Visit, Charity Gets Donation

Valve are paying to fly Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson to Australia to see a modder, which has resulted in money being donated to the Child's Play charity.

This whole thing started a few weeks back when a modder, jokingly demanding Valve head honcho Gabe Newell fly him out to see Left 4 Dead 2 and show off his mod, was told he'd have to pay for Newell and Johnson to fly out to him in Australia, instead.

This led to an online drive to fly the pair to Australia, which raised in excess of the required $3,000 USD over the course of a few days. At this stage, the modder - known as Joe W-A of Brisbane, Australia - alerted the community that should Newell and Johnson back out, the money would go to the Child's Play charity, which purchases games, toys, movies, consoles, and the like for hospitals, which can then be used by sick children.

And now we know: Valve is paying to fly the two out, which means that all the money has gone to charity.

"Gabe and Erik are paying their own way, which means all the money accumulated will be going to the Child's Play charity," reads the fundraiser blog, followed the next day by "$3,127.27 USD was just donated to Child's Play. Well done, everyone. Big thanks to you and Valve."

And we're genuinely happy to hear it. It's a bit of a heartwarming story with what appears to be a happy ending.

If you want to donate to Child's Play, the charity set up by those chaps over at Penny Arcade - which raised $1,434,377 USD last year - have a look at the site here.