COVID Central: Nintendo Donates 9,500 Facemasks to North Bend, Washington

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, and a bunch of studios have reportedly been working hard to both protect their own people and ensure that they stay running. To that end, a lot of them have started instituting things like working from home policies (like CD Projekt Red, Microsoft, and more) while others have been preaching awareness and trying to raise money, like the Plague Inc. folks. Nintendo, so far, hasn’t done anything like that, which is pretty on-brand for them as a company. They live in their own little bubble, for good or for ill, and they seem hesitant to address anything in current events, even something as immediately urgent as a global pandemic.

That changed a little bit earlier this week, when the city of North Bend, Washington, posted a public “thank you” letter to Nintendo, for having donated a whopping 9,500 N95 Particulate Respirator masks to the city:

North Bend is home to the North American production facility of the world’s largest video gaming company. Nintendo has been “Putting Smiles on the Faces of Everyone Nintendo Touches”, according to their Corporate Social Responsibility statement. Today is no different. Nintendo representative Jerry Danson contacted Eastside Fire & Rescue (EF&R) to generously donate over 9,500 N95 Particulate Respirator masks.

Apparently, Nintendo had been holding on to them as a part of preparedness planning, but with recent events being what they were, they figured they were better off in the hands of people who would actually need them, like emergency responders. A commendable and generous donation, to say the least.

If Nintendo is taking any other efforts to combat the virus, such as giving extended sick leave or asking employees to work from home, that hasn’t been made known to the public yet. I’d like to think they are, but Nintendo is never as “good” as we’d ever like them to be…