The countdown is on! Our program has had an amazing year, raising more than $800K for type 1 diabetes (T1D) research and advocacy through game bundles and sales, charity streams, and other initiatives—and most importantly, we had a blast doing it. Thank you to everyone in our community who helped make 2024 a year for the record books!
Without further ado, here are our top ten highlights for 2024 (in no particular order).
#1 — T1.Done
The first weekend in April, Nukkuler and her husband SpikeVegeta organized an amazing fundraiser with their friends in the speedrunning community called T1.Done. The event’s name comes from a common term in competitive speedrunning, “.done” (pronounced “dot-done”), which a speedrunner types into chat to signal they’ve finished a run.
Hosted by Spike and featuring Super Mario 64 16-Star Blindfold, A Link to the Past 100% No Major Glitches, Super Mario Bros. 2D Super Shuffler, and more, T1.Done was a highly entertaining event that raised over $11K for Breakthrough T1D—money that will help us finally say “.done!” to T1D one of these days. Check out the archived videos here.
#2 — Vintage vs. Type 1
Magic: The Gathering celeb Brian David-Marshall lives with T1D, and a few years ago he lost his younger brother to the disease. In March, he teamed up with Daybreak Games (the people behind Magic: The Gathering Online) to present Vintage vs. Type 1, a weekend showcase of Magic drafts with unusual stipulations based on the lyrics of songs by Billy Joel, his brother’s favorite artist. Learn more in this blog post.
Vintage vs. Type 1 raised over $15K and Brian’s already thinking about how to make the event bigger and better in 2025. Watch for details in the new year.
#3 — Australian Diabetes Week (and Other Global Shenanigans)
Breakthrough T1D has five international affiliates, and we’re always looking for ways to get them more involved in what we do here at Breakthrough T1D Play—after all, our community is global!
This year we had our first Twitch fundraiser in partnership with an international affiliate, JDRF Australia, in honor of Australian Diabetes Week in July. A small but hearty crew of Australian creators raised over $5K AUS to support T1D research and advocacy down under.
We also welcomed staffers from Australia, the UK, and Canada to our Twitch channel in November to hear about diabetes advancements in those countries. We’ll continue to expand our global offerings in 2025. And don’t forget: you can choose to support an international affiliate during any charity streams, by selecting them as the beneficiary when you set up your Tiltify campaign.
Speaking of the organization’s global presence, we were blown away by this video from Breakthrough T1D UK, created with over 35 people affected by T1D, to bring to life real daily experiences—the relentlessness, the resilience, the challenges, and above all, the hope for a cure.
#4 — Play by the Bay
Breakthrough T1D Play is primarily an online program, but this fall we had a special opportunity to meet a few of our community members in person during Play by the Bay. Wavy, Toonafeesh, AnEternalEnigma, and Arielehm traveled to San Francisco for a two-day adventure that included a Breakthrough T1D Walk and a tour of Minutia, a next-generation cell therapy company based in Oakland.
The crew also got to sight-see in SF, with a cable car ride, a trip to the famed Musee Mechanique in Fisherman’s Wharf, and an up close and personal visit to Oracle Park (home of the San Francisco Giants) among the highlights.
Play By the Bay wrapped up with a crazy joint charity stream at Twitch HQ that raised $7K (including a very generous $2K from Twitch themselves). Check out the VOD here if you missed it live.
#5 — Second Annual Blue Heart Awards
The Blue Heart Awards returned at the end of June to celebrate the end of our fifth fundraising season (to coincide with the end of Breakthrough T1D’s fiscal year). The online award ceremony gave us a chance to honor the top fundraisers from our 2023–2024 season, with 26 physical trophies once again provided by our resident 3D printing guru, Toonafeesh.
Toona posted this great video showing how the sausage gets made:
Want one of those beauties for your very own? Keep fundraising—our next ceremony will take place in June 2025.
#6 — Vertex’s Big Announcement
In November, Vertex Pharmaceuticals announced that their stem cell–derived islet therapy VX-880 is entering into a Phase 3 clinical trial, enrolling 50 people. This is the first time a potential T1D cure is entering a phase 3 trial, which gathers data required for FDA submission.
The islets used in this therapy come from the Breakthrough T1D–funded work of Doug Melton, who first turned stem cels into insulin-producing cells in 2014.
VX-880 is not for the entire T1D community. It requires taking immunosuppressants and is only being tested in people with sever hypoglycemia unawareness and significant hypoglycemic episodes. Within this at-risk population, 11 out of 12 participants so far have reduced or eliminated the need for external insulin (among other successful results).
That being said, Vertex is also testing VX-264, a stem cell-derived islet therapy that doesn’t require immunosuppressants. Look forward to more news in 2025!
#7 — JDRF’s Big Rebrand
For people in the know, the name “JDRF” just rolled off the tongue, but for people newer to the T1D scene, the acronym could be hard to explain. The biggest problem was the “J,” which stands for “juvenile”—an outdated and out-of-touch way to describe type 1 diabetes. It’s been a thorn in our sides for years, and in 2024 the organization faced the challenge head-on by rebranding to Breakthrough T1D.
With that name change came one of our own, and JDRF Game2Give morphed into Breakthrough T1D Play in June. If you missed it at the time, this blog post goes into more detail about why change was needed and why “Breakthrough T1D” was picked as the organization’s new identity.
#8 — Roblox Updates: Charity Walk Simulator & the Ford Shelby Super Snake
Our Roblox game, Breakthrough T1D World (formerly JDRF One World), received two big updates this year.
The first came in January when we launched Charity Walk Simulator, a whole new game, accessible through a portal in the base game, that makes you both a participant and a manager of your very own Breakthrough T1D Walk. You can learn more about it in this blog post.
Our second Roblox update just happened in November during National Diabetes Awareness Month: a new racing minigame featuring the 2025 Ford Shelby Super Snake. Hop into this sporty car and zip around the racetrack to try to make it onto the leaderboard. Once you finish the race, you’ll get your very own Shelby Super Snake in your inventory, and you can drive it all over Breakthough T1D World.
#9 — Game Over, T1D! Steam Sale — The Sequel
In February we held our second Game Over, T1D! Steam sale, with 50+ games at big discounts. Each participating company donated to Breakthrough T1D after the sale and our community had a great time playing the some of the featured games on the Breakthrough T1D Twitch channel, with their playthroughs rerun on the sale’s Steam page.
Sound like fun? We’re doing another one in February 2025—keep an eye out on Discord for announcements!
#10 — Dev Diaries with Game Industry Celebs
Dev Diaries is a streaming series where we interview game developers about their careers while discussing their T1D connection (when applicable) and playing a game they worked on. This year’s star-studded lineup included:
- Hans ten Cate, Breakthrough T1D Play’s cofounder and a former EA producer / development director, playing The Simpsons Game
- Chris Kohler, editorial director of Digital Eclipse and renowned retro game aficionado, playing The Making of Karateka
- Jon Bellini, an indie developer and T1D dad, playing Million Monster Militia
- Josh Fairhurst, the CEO of Limited Run Games (who lives with T1D), playing Phantasy Star Online
But hands-down, our most exciting Dev Diaries of the year happened just yesterday when we were joined by game dev legend Will Wright, creator of SimCity and The Sims, to play Sims 2 and get a sneak peek of his new game Proxi.
Sound like fun? We’re doing another one in February 2025—keep an eye out on Discord for announcements!