Donation totals go BRRRR. And you know how you can see numbers going BRRR year after year? Pubnub!

Pubnub hosts real-time APIs that we use to keep donation totals on screen for you to watch like a hawk, display silent auction bids, and more throughout the run, and we’re so glad to have them back as a sponsor. Without Pubnub, all we’d be able to say is that we’ve raised at least $1, and even that would be a guess. 

Pubnub is trusted by thousands of companies world-wide, and this baffling charity drive! Thank you Pubnub!

Hey Chat? Chat... Y'all. How? Well, I guess that answer is one donation at a time, huh? We just hit a fully ridiculous milestone- $12,000,000 raised for Child's Play Charity lifetime. What began as a few friends playing the world's worst video game for a couple of days brought us here. It's astounding, it's humbling, and we couldn't be more proud of all of you. We keep the bus on the road, but you make the numbers go BRRRRR.

Thank you. On behalf of all of us here at Desert Bus For Hope THANK YOU.

Zeta shift needed a bit of luck for a good run, and you know what? Y'all DELIVERED. We dug through all of the lucky charms and came out with a winner that will really light up our run.

First, our runner-up, with a cushion-rotating dragon charm:

And our winner, granting us all of the luck (it's ours and no one else can have it), this AMAZING omamori, embossed with "rotate the cushions" in Japanese on the back, and the Zeta 'Z' on the front!

Thank you so much, Setra Lynn! Your art is fantastic, and you've won yourself a loot box! And inside it was......
....
...
A Desert Bus 7 Photo Book, and a Desert Bus 2024 pin! Our shipping team will be in touch!

Thank you all for entering, and keep an eye out for future Zeta art challenges during the run!

It's the first Zeta shift of the run, and we want to start off with some good luck. So for our first art challenge, we want you to suggest a good luck charm for us! No rabbit's foot, but someone else's foot is probably fine.

Please send your visual representation of a good luck charm for Zeta to contest@desertbus.org with the subject line "Zeta Good Luck Charm" from now until 5am PST to enter! It can be any visual media, so feel free to get weird (though your friendly comms team still has to see it, so please not that weird) and preferably in the form of jpg, gif, png, or tif. Please note: Any AI entries will be disqualified!

Winners will receive a DB merch loot crate prize to be announced after the winner is revealed!

Tonight was a good night.

We made the news!

We learned about rocks and rocks accessories!

We made friends!

We offered sincere and heartfelt life advice!

We evoked vintage isekai!

And we got a little cheesy!*

* The VST beat me to the far superior pun. Edam it all.

Now I'm going to go home and gorge myself on a sumptuous charcuterie board. See you tomorrow night!

For the first creative challenge of 2025, we lobbed a weird one at you. And you didn't even blink! This only encourages us to get weirder going forward. You have been warned.

We received a cornucopia of art depicting the Night Watch crew as big-head fruit people à la 1990s Fruit Gusher commercials. It was no easy task to pick a winner from this bumper crop of submissions, but we persevered.

Honourable mentions:

Runners-up:

And... OUR WINNER:

Thank you all so much for your incredible, yet tragically inedible work! This was a juicy one.

We do it all for Child's Play, but we couldn't do it without Child's Play. As our event has grown, Child's Play has given us busloads of technical, organizational, and moral support along the way. Even more importantly, they take the money we raise and turn it into real magic.

To date, Child's Play has partnered with over 190 pediatric hospitals to provide gaming equipment and other therapeutic technology to kids in care. Gaming gives kids a way to play, to channel their creativity, and to connect with other kids beyond the shared experience of being in hospital. Video games can also provide a helpful distraction during painful or scary procedures, significantly reducing a child's stress during treatment.

If you'd like to learn more about all the amazing work Child's Play does, please check out their website at https://childsplaycharity.org/. (They've been doing this for 22 years, so there's a lot to read about!) From the bottom of our enormous collective heart: thank you, Child's Play. It's an honour to work together!

We hit a big number!!! We've sailed past the $50k mark in just the sixth hour of Desert Bus 2025, and you, the viewers, are the inexorable tide that brought us there. Thank you!!

Hey, 90s kids! Remember this layer of hell?

For the first creative challenge of 2025, we're asking you to send Night Watch to the fruit dimension. Using the visual medium of your choice, create your interpretation of Night Watch as a 1990s Fruit Gushers commercial. Email your submission to contest@desertbus.org, using the subject line "Gush Night Watch". The deadline for entries is 10:30 pm PST.

What's in it for you? The mysterious wonder and wondrous mystery that is The Desert Bus Loot Box! Our winning artist will receive a treasure trove of surprise merch from Deserts Bus past, to be revealed upon their victory.

I can hear the bells! Something's beginning. It's our very first live auction of Desert Bus 2025! Tonight's raucous clanging will herald the sale of this magnificent doctor's bag, crafted by leatherworker and longtime friend of the bus korvys.

Live Auctions are run in our Twitch channel chat over at twitch.tv/desertbus. In order to participate in Live Auctions, you'll need to sign up for a Donor Account, then link it to your Twitch account. You can do so from the Donor Account page here on desertbus.org. If you're bidding, watch the chat for updates, as the stream may be on a delay!

If you want to be the talk of your table, make sure you're all set up before the action begins at 7 pm PST!

Sold! Amount raised: $8,282.82