When fans line up at midnight next Tuesday for Call of Duty: Ghosts, a group of hardcore players will already be about 12 hours into a marathon session to finish the game while raising money for charity. For the second year in a row, a team of online gamer personalities led by Twitch’s Ernest Le are putting on what they call “The Race.” It’s a campaign to be the first to play through the game nonstop on Max Level until they reach Max Prestige, the paramount achievement in Call of Duty games. This year, Le and his team have organized their race as a fundraiser for Activision’s Call of Duty Endowment, a nonprofit that helps those who served in the US military transition to civilian jobs. While Activision isn’t giving the effort its official backing, major brands like Monster Energy and PC maker Razer have stepped in to help.

Le is a self-described Call of Duty fanatic who first began streaming his gaming sessions after joining Twitch, where he’s worked on building gaming communities. His obsession with playing the game in marathon sessions started about two years ago.

“When Modern Warfare 3 came out, I just started playing the game . . .  I played it probably way too much, way more than I should have,” said Le. “I was playing, playing, playing for hours a day — 12, 16, some days it was 20 hours a day when the game first came out.”

Le was streaming his game play as he was playing towards getting Max Prestige in Modern Warfare 3, and he got noticed. He says a Kotaku article put his Twitch channel on gamers’ radars. When Activision released Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 last year, he decided to pull in three of his YouTuber friends and set up a nonstop live stream where they played 24 hours a day, switching off in shifts. It took them just over eight days to finish. When it was over, their channel had pulled in 1.2 million unique visitors and 4.4 million views.

Despite the impressive reach for their campaign last year and the expectation to grow it this year, not to mention the decision to turn it into a fundraiser for Call of Duty Endowment, Le and his team couldn’t convince Activision to get on board. They did however score by enlisting Julie Thomas Knap, a game industry consultant and brand integration specialist who brought in major sponsors to help fund the effort and raise charity money. In addition to Monster and Razer, Knap was able to get on board gamer-friendly brands GUNNAR Optiks, Elgato, Eat24.com and KontrolFreek.

“The history of what they did last year made a lot of people sit up and take notice,” said Knap. “The numbers from last year in terms of viewership was solid, especially with how everyone’s community has grown.”

Knap pointed out that while having “The Race” have a charity function helped, it was really about convincing these brands that their involvement would net them a positive ROI. They’d be reaching an impressive number of people from an audience they regularly strive for, and they had the opportunity to create custom campaigns.

“[The brands] all have an affinity with gaming. All of the integrations were a very natural fit. We didn’t want to force anything,” said Knap, adding, “Everyone in their own way is doing something unique. Eat24.com . . . they know each of the five personalities so well they’ve created codes that are kind of like inside jokes. They’ve also got overlays that are so funny, you look at them and you go, ‘oh my god this is perfect for the game community’.”

The brand partners lined up by Knap are really the force driving the fundraising part of “The Race.” The live stream is free on the official “The Race” Twitch channel. The way the effort will raise money is by giving out a virtual raffle ticket for each $5 donation, with backers eligible for prizes being given away by those participating companies throughout the event. All of the ad revenue raised for the event is also going towards the charity.

Thanks to that support, Le and his team have also been able to go bigger in how they’ve set up the format this year. For one, they’ve taken a giant leap towards establishing this as a reality TV-like event, renting a house in Los Angeles where most of the live game play will take place. They’ve dubbed it GamerShore, an homage to MTV’s famed reality show Jersey Shore. The team itself has grown too, with Le gathering a squad of four crack Call of Duty players, all of them YouTube personalities. They are Tucker “JERiiCHO” Boner, Robbie “MuzzaFuzza” Kenison, Trevor “TmarTn” Martin and Brennon “Goldglove” O’Neill. Collectively with Le, they have a social audience of 3.2 million, and that’s where most of their promotional efforts have been focused.

Le wouldn’t estimate what the charity is expected to raise, but he seemed confident they’ll grow their audience this year. That could get Activision and perhaps more major brands to take notice the next time they plan “The Race.”

“I think combined we have about 2.5 million YouTube subscribers. [We’re] all going to promote it on [our] YouTube channels. There’s a hashtag [#TheRace] that we’ll promote every day. Last year we got it worldwide trending, so I imagine this year it’ll be easy to do as well,” he said.

“The Race” kicks off at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, November 4, with a media event at the GamerShore house in Los Angeles. The live stream takes place on a dedicated channel on Twitch. To attend the media event or for more information on the campaign, contact Julie Thomas Knap.