Team Courage have emerged victorious in the first-ever CODE Bowl, a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare eSports competition which saw eight different streamers teaming up with members of the United States Army eSports team. The CODE Bowl was organized by the Call of Duty Endowment organization, a non-profit co-founded by Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick which strives to assist military veterans find high-quality careers.
Focusing on military veterans in both the United States and the United Kingdom, the Call of Duty Endowment program employs a Seal of Distinction award for other nonprofits which demonstrate excellent levels of “effectiveness, efficiency, and integrity” when it comes to placing former military servicemen and servicewomen in high-quality civilian jobs. Those organizations which are valued highly enough to receive a Seal of Distinction not only gain prestige and cause awareness but also a $30,000 award pool with “potential access to additional restricted funding, advice, and support.“
Now, the Call of Duty Endowment program also includes the CODE Bowl, a livestream event which took place for the first time earlier today. The winners, Team Courage, include popular game streamer Jack “CouRage” Dunlop alongside United States Army eSports team members SGT Nicholas “Dexy” MacKay and SPC Losif “Nelpy” Covalenco. Over the course of the event, the Call of Duty Endowment program reported that they raised enough funds “to place more than 1,000 veterans in high quality jobs.”
Currently, the Call of Duty Endowment has placed over 63,000 veterans in new jobs since 2009, with a goal of 100,000 by 2024. The organization claims it costs roughly $522 (according to 2018 estimates) to get a military veteran a good job in the marketplace, and that the average salary of veterans placed by the program is just shy of $60,000 a year. According to the Endowment’s official breakdown, Acitivision Blizzard pays for all of the organization’s overhead costs, and a full one hundred percent of everything donated goes directly to the program’s grantees.
For a game which takes so much from the military and turns it into simple fun play times, it’s nice to see the developers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare giving back to their communities in such an important way. While war may forever be dramatized in the world of video games, in real life it is always important to take care of those who have served, and the Call of Duty Endowment organization seems to be doing as much as they can to keep veterans both happy and employed. Congratulations to Team Courage for winning the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare CODE Bowl, and here’s to many, many more.
