San Francisco, Mar 22 (IANS): Fortnite developer Epic Games has announced that it has raised $36 million for people affected by Russia's war on Ukraine.

The money is being donated to a handful of different aid groups, including Direct Relief, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children's Fund, and the World Food Programme.

"We are not waiting for the actual funds to come in from our platform and payment partners, which can take a while depending on how the transaction was processed," Epic said in a blog post. "As transactions are reported, we will log them and send the funds to the humanitarian relief organisations within days."

Epic Games recently announced that there are now more than 500 million game accounts.

It is a notable milestone as Epic continues to build the Epic Games Store as a competitor to Steam and bring in new players for titles like Fortnite and Rocket League.

The company did not share further details about that 500 million, however, so it is unclear how many of those accounts represent segments like people that only play Epic's own games (such as Fortnite) or those who have only used Epic's store.

The company has put a huge amount of resources behind growing its PC games store -- and therefore, getting more people to sign up for accounts -- since it launched in December 2018.