Nintendo halts shipments to Russia

Nintendo has announced that it has stopped sending shipments to Russia but does not state that the ongoing invasion is to blame.

Nintendo’s eStore had previously entered a maintenance mode in Russia, which halted the use of the service to purchase software for the Switch. Nintendo has now made a statement to Eurogamer confirming that it has ceased all shipments to Russia.

“We have decided to suspend shipping all Nintendo products to Russia for the foreseeable future. This is due to considerable volatility surrounding the logistics of shipping and distributing physical goods,” a spokesperson from Nintendo said.

“In addition, Nintendo eShop in Russia is currently under maintenance following the suspension of transactions in Russian rubles by the payment provider.” Nintendo did not make any mention of the conflict in Ukraine.

Yesterday (March 9), Nintendo announced that it was delaying the release of its turn-based war game Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp “due to recent world events”. A tweet said, “we have made the decision to delay Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, which was originally scheduled to release on Nintendo Switch on April 8. Please stay tuned for updates on a new release date.”

Ukraine based GSC Game World has also announced that it is delaying the release of Stalker 2: Heart Of Chernobyl. The development took place in Kyiv, and GSC Game World said it would resume development “after the victory”.

Many studios have made donations to aid Ukraine. 11 Bit Studios donated £520k from This War Of Mine sales to the Red Cross in Ukraine.

CD Projekt Red also donated £181k to a humanitarian organisation in Poland that is taking in refugees crossing the border from Ukraine.

In other news, Konami has announced the TMNT Cowabunga Collection containing 13 retro games.