Malmö has become quite popular in the gaming scene as of late. Being host to a few big gaming tournaments and now with ESA Marathon coming back for the second time. ESA Marathon is a charity event featuring speedrunners from all over the world raising money for the Alzheimer’s Foundation (Alzheimersfonden).
So what is speedrunning I find you asking? Speedrunning is the concept of beating a game or reaching a certain point in a game the fastest. The “runner” usually achieves this by using bugs, exploits and sheer speedy skills. The general philosophy is that if a game exists it can be subject to a speedrun. The community around speedrunning is enormous around the world and an event like this draws tens of thousands of viewers every year.
ESA Marathon is being held at the Quality Hotel View in Hyllie. Over 600 tickets have been sold to speedrunners all over the world. Besides showing the passion of the speedrunning community and promoting speedrunning in general the event also raises money to charity. This year ESA Marathon are raising money towards Alzheimer research through the Alzheimer’s Foundation. They have at the time of writing reached over 22000 dollars in donations.
If games played super quick, quirky players with a lot of humor and a great cause is your jam. Then I recommend you tune in to Twitch and give it a watch. You don’t need an account to watch the event but you need one if you want to participate in the chat. The event will be running until Sunday 28th of July and I know I will be watching!
