Games Done Quick Schedule: How to Watch 'Doom Eternal' Charity Speedrun

A Doom Eternal speedrun will be featured in this week's Games Done Quick charity event, to raise money for Doctors Without Borders.

What Is Games Done Quick?

Games Done Quick (GDQ) is a biannual fundraising marathon, in which volunteers try to complete their favourite titles as swiftly as possible, all while explaining their process to a mesmerized audience.

Ever since the emergence of livestreaming platforms such as Twitch, speedrunning has become increasingly popular, as gamers are always impressed by displays of raw skill and by the dedication that it takes to perfect certain titles.

Notable examples include skater82297's 17-minute run of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Stennis' 14-minute blitz through Dark Souls 2.

To achieve these extraordinary completion times, expert speedrunners (including those listed above) will often rely on technical bugs that they can exploit to circumnavigate entire sections of games.

For instance, you might be able to jump through a wall in order to skip ahead to later levels, or there might be an unusual way for you to accelerate a character's movement. Alternatively, there are also "glitchless" speedruns that do not take advantage of any shortcuts.

GDQ was set up back in 2010 to tap into the speedrunning zeitgeist. In a nutshell, hundreds of volunteers will livestream their attempts at speedrunning a chosen game and explain in detail how they are getting the fastest time possible.

Meanwhile, spectators can submit financial donations at any point, with various incentives offered along the way, including the chance to name in-game characters or to make special requests.

Two main events are held each year, those being the "Awesome Games Done Quick" marathon in January and the "Summer Games Done Quick" marathon in July. Donations for the former go towards the Prevent Cancer Foundation, while the latter is in support of Doctors Without Borders.

In between these two bigger events, GDQ also organizes smaller campaigns and one-off livestreams for various other charities.

For an understanding of how successful these events are, you can view the donation list on GDQ's official website. There, you will discover that this year's "Awesome Game's Done Quick" managed to raise an outstanding $2,739,612.05, while 2020's summer marathon raked in a similarly impressive $2,345,785.57.

Summer Games Done Quick 2021 Schedule

This year's "Summer Games Done Quick" event began on Sunday 4 July and, as always, is raising money for the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders.

The full timetable can be found on the Games Done Quick website, where you will find over 150 speedruns planned for the next seven days. When you open the schedule, it will automatically convert to your respective time zone to avoid any mix-ups.

Highlights from the event include a 26-minute speedrun of Astro's Playroom, a 90-minute race through the campaign Mass Effect 2 (and its DLC), an "all-dungeons" run of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a two-hour playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn (on its hardest difficulty setting), and a "glitchless" run of the notoriously brutal Dark Souls 3, which will last just over an hour.

How to Watch the Games Done Quick 'Doom Eternal' Charity Speedrun

These are all impressive undertakings in their own right, but one feat that is sure to capture gamers' attention is a 60-minute speedrun through Doom Eternals "Ancient Gods" expansion.

For context, this action-packed DLC was released in two separate parts, which is why the charity livestream is also being split in half. The first part of the Doom Eternal speedrun will begin on Thursday at 6:33 p.m. ET, followed by the second part at 7:13 p.m.

Aggregate website How Long to Beat (where average playtimes for videogames are calculated based on player submissions) estimates that "Ancient Gods" part one should take roughly five hours to finish, and that part two takes about four hours.

Speedrunner BloodShot9001 is aiming to do both components in under an hour, with no "major glitches" being exploited whatsoever.

As if that was not challenging enough, the DLC chapters will also be played on "Nightmare difficulty" where even the weakest enemies are capable of killing you in just two hits, never mind the tougher ones.

To watch the ambitious Doom Eternal livestream as it happens, you can head straight to the Games Done Quick website or the official Twitch channel. If you miss the broadcast, then you will still be able to watch it later when it is uploaded to the GDQ YouTube page.

Doom Eternal itself has just received a next-gen upgrade for the Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X and PS5. You can find out more here.