It might seem a strange combination, but charity and war have joined forces this weekend, as Activision are promising large sums of money to War Child depending on the number of people playing Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox Live.

The event is called “Game for Good”, and will raise at least £150,000, with an extra £25k for every 100,000 players over 600,000. War Child will also receive the proceeds from sales of wrist bands.

David Tyler, Marketing Director for Activision UK & Ireland, said that this event is “the largest ever charitable initiative the British games industry has ever launched”.

We say: Interesting. There’s been a lot of negative PR around this game, so the very idea of creating some positive PR is great – if you are a marketer working for Activision. I imagine that sales of the game will leap as a result, which is partly the intention. However, let’s not all be so cynical – this is a great initiative, and it could lay the path for future events based around video games raising significant amounts of money for good causes.

So – yes, it’s violent and it’s bloody and it’s annoyed a lot of Daily Mail readers, but they’ve redeemed themselves by raising a pot load of cash for a worthy cause.