A video game version of Demi Lovato raises money for the environment

Demi Lovato is playing for a good cause.

Starting Tuesday (December 3), the pop star will appear as an animated version of herself in the mobile video game Subway surfers. Available as an in-app purchase, Lovato's character will be available in the game until January 5, 2025.

All profits from Lovato's character will go to certified environmental projects, including the Hongera Project, which restores forests affected by logging, agriculture, development and firewood collection in Kenya, and New Zealand's WAI Wanaka, the which works to improve ecosystem health and reverse biodiversity loss and maintain healthy water. Watch Lovato talk about the project (and the plants) below.

A spokesperson for the initiative would not share projections of how much the Lovato collaboration could raise, but says the funds were raised by a similar project by J Balvin and Subway surfers in November 2023 raised enough money to offset over 2,000 tons of carbon emissions during the three weeks of the campaign. That number, a project spokesman says, is equivalent to the carbon emissions generated by a concert with 100,000 attendees.

Both Lovato and Balvin's characters are projects from Planet Play, which works with video game studios to create solutions to climate issues in the global video game industry and gaming community. The Lovato collaboration is part of Planet Play's just-launched Make Green Tuesday Moves campaign, which raises money for environmental projects through limited execution of in-app items in a suite of games.

The company reports that Balvin's playable character was the most successful in-app purchase Subway surfers'history. During the three weeks that Balvin was in the game, players accumulated three years of collective runtime with his character.