Masahiro Sakurai, the producer of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, has announced a major change to the game’s ongoing development in light of the Coronavirus.

In a post on his Twitter account, Sakurai confirmed that he is going to start working remotely on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and supervising its development from home. This news comes shortly after the announcement of a Capcom employee testing positive for the virus last week.

You can read a translation of his announcement below (via Sephazon):

私もテレワークに移行しています。
つまり、遠隔でさまざまな場所に監修などを行います。
『スマブラSP』は極めて高いセキュリティを保つべき企画であり、持ち出しは難しいところもありますが、それでもやらねばならない時です。
みなさん、頑張って乗り切りましょう!!

— 桜井 政博 / Masahiro Sakurai (@Sora_Sakurai) April 7, 2020

I’m also going to be working remotely.
In other words, I’ll be supervising from home. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate needs to maintain extremely tight security and is therefore difficult to work on remotely, but now’s the time to do so.
Let’s work hard and get through this together!

With Japan poised to declare a state of emergency due to the Coronavirus and encouraging all non-essential businesses to operate remotely, it is likely that we will be seeing many other game developers in Japan adopting such measures to help fight the spread of the virus in their country.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.