Now here’s some interesting news. While a bunch of events, movies, anime, and conventions are being postponed, delayed, or outright cancelled due to Corona-chan, Square Enix is moving in the opposite direction: they’re actually shipping Final Fantasy VII Remake early in Europe and Australia to compensate for potential hiccups and delays from the distribution side of things.

They sent out a two-picture announcement on Twitter on March 30th, 2020.

An important message from the #FinalFantasy VII Remake development team. #FF7R pic.twitter.com/UwBMNaIaXX

— FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE (@finalfantasyvii) March 30, 2020

The relevant part of the announcement from producer Yoshinori Kitase and game director Tetsuya Nomura reads…

“Our highest priority is that all of you, including those who live in countries currently facing the biggest disruption, can play the game at launch, so we made the decision to ship the game far earlier than usual to Europe and Asutralia.

“As a result, there is a greater change that some of you in these regions will now get a copy of the game prior to the worldwide release date of April 10. For other western regions, including the Americas, copies will be shipped this week and we feel optimistic that most of you will receive the game for launch day. However, due to the challenging situation we cannot provide delivery dates for each country and each retailer.”

The second part of the announcement simply goes on to mention that those of you who receive the game early should be mindful of others and avoid posting spoilers.

I doubt anyone will listen and we’ll likely get a deluge of spoiler content posted up on YouTube anyway.

Expect a lot of channels to get hit with copyright strikes from Square Enix, or have the content globally blocked.

Either way, the physical version of the game will be out in the wild well before the digital version of the game will arrive. So if you want to avoid spoilers, you’ll likely have to stay off the net until April 10th. If you don’t care about spoilers, then consume away.

(Thanks for the news tip Mugen Tenshin)