CARY – A big news day doubleheader for Epic Games on Monday: A massive fund-raiser for humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine and a victory for its Unreal game development engine.

First, Ukraine:

Fortnite – Epic’s global hit – announced Sunday plans to donate proceeds fro the kickoff of its new season to organizations sending help to Ukraine,

Within hours, Fortnite’s team tweeted the effort had raised $36 million.

“Together we’ve already raised $36 million USD for humanitarian relief for Ukraine. The funds will go to @UNICEF,  @WFP, @Refugees,  @DirectRelief,” Fortnite tweeted.

As CBC news in Canada noted, Epic chose a big day for the fund kickoff:

“The choice of the sales window is significant, since the company released the latest version of its best-selling game that day.”

The Witcher news

More good news for Epic came Monday night when developers of the hit game “The Witcher” announced its embrace of Epic’s widely used Unreal game enginge for a new version of the title.

The Witcher, a series of novels, was turned into a series on Netflix and a video game by CD Projekt which it said would drop its own game engine in favor of Unreal for a new title, Bloomberg news reported.