It’s August, which is not Halloween. It’s summer. But that won’t stop the marketing machine from unveiling products like this: A Child’s Play themed Hello Kitty plush toy.

Let's say you're a Valve super-fan. I know I'm reaching somebody out there with that label. And you want to buy yourself something nice. Something Valve-related that nobody else has.

Citing a large number of refunded donations and confusion over the goal of the "Retake Mass Effect" Child's Play charity drive, Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins draws the line: "Child's Play cannot be a tool to draw attention to a cause. Child's Play must be the Cause."

The attempted raffle of an early copy of Mass Effect 3 this week still bothers me, even though its owners apologized and pulled back the gimmick when they realized it would run afoul of anti-gambling laws. The raffle or its legality isn't what really troubles me, however.

You'll never look at video games' interstellar soldiers the same way again after watching this production by the MAKE design studio. The creators there made the clip pro bono—generating work which looks like it took weeks, if not months, to finish—to drum up support for the Child's Play charity started eight years…

Artist Ashley Riot created this wonderful bit of original gaming art to donate to the Child's Play charity dinner auction.

The Humble Indie Bundle 3 has now added five more games, and still is being offered for the super-low price of "whatever you want to pay." Provided whatever you want to pay is more than the average donation, which is $4.96 as of now.

And Yet It Moves, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, Hammerfight and VVVVVV just went on sale...for however much you feel like paying.

A2M's Naughty Bear, a video game about a deranged child's toy with murder in its heart, wasn't the blockbuster success I hoped it would be. Perhaps the concept just needed to be powered by a familiar face. After that it's all Child's Play.

Child's Play - a charity founded by Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins - managed to raise over $2 million during the course of 2010. Amazing.

Inspired by the Humble Indie Bundles, a band of developers behind some of the iPhone's finest games have banded together to run a little charity drive of their own. TL;DR: awesome iPhone games for $0.99.

If you ever looked at 2009's incredible replica Portal gun and thought "ooh, I'd like that", now's your chance to put your money where your mouth is.

It's that time of year again, when a group of charitable gamers sit behind the wheel of the infamous Desert Bus and drive endlessly, tirelessly, maybe even masochistically, at a maximum speed of 45mph for nearly a full week

You can count on Gears of War fans when it comes to buying virtual goods in the name of doing good. Want proof? Epic Games' charity campaign tied to Gears of War 3 just raised over $150,000 for charity.

Science Fiction series love killing off the hopeless new guy: Star Trek has its red shirts and Gears of War has its rookies.

Last week, a pack went on sale that let you name your own price for five great indie games, all in the name of charity. Know what a ton of people then went and did? Pirated the thing. Wonderful.

How much would you pay for a copy of World of Goo, Gish and three additional games that don't prominently feature black blobs dripping with indie cred? Thanks to the Humble Indie Bundle you pay exactly "whatever."

Two weeks ago the inseparable duo behind popular game-themed web comic Penny Arcade received an award for their work as "video game ambassadors", this weekend they'll be earning it... again.

Despite a flatlined economy and a sharp downward trend in game sales, Child's Play and other gaming-themed benefits have done as well or better than in better times.