GameStop Has Cancelled Their Animal Crossing and DOOM Midnight Launches

GameStop Has Cancelled Their Animal Crossing and DOOM Midnight Launches

Written by on | OpenCritic

Games discussed: , DOOM Eternal

Gamers will not be able to pick up neither Animal Crossing: New Horizons or DOOM Eternal at midnight this Thursday at GameStop. 

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, aka coronavirus, GameStop has cancelled their midnight releases of DOOM Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons later this week. According to senior vice president of store operations Gary Riding (via IGN), this move is meant to reduce close contact between customers. 

"Like many businesses, we are taking action to institute multiple social distancing practices in our stores such as only allowing 10 customers in our stores at any given time, cancelling all gaming events and midnight launch activities until further notice, disabling temporarily all interactive gaming stations in our stores, introducing in-store line management practices that creates a 1-meter parameter between customers in checkout lines, and encouraging customers to several our online ecommerce capabilities and direct deliveries to their homes from our warehouses or stores," Riding stated. 

Riding also mentioned that GameStop stores have "implemented heightened cleaning practices on all high-touchpoint surfaces within our stores. And like other retailers, we are taking aggressive actions in an admittedly difficult environment, to quickly obtain the necessary cleaning supplies needed." 

GameStop is one of the many businesses having to take extensive safety measures in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. All across the country, retailers and movie chains have been closing down their locations to help prevent close contact between people, hoping to help stop the spread of the virus. GameStop has not announced closures in states that do not require them to. 

DOOM Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons will both release on March 20th. New Horizons will launch exclusively for the Nintendo Switch. DOOM Eternal will release for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia. A Switch version of the game will release at a later time. 

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I have been playing video games for as long as I can remember. I am a huge fan of JRPGs, though I also enjoy fighters. I have been writing about video games for a few years now. If it has a great story, I am sure that I will dig it.