Take care of your Nintendo Switch — Nintendo’s repair shops are closed due to COVID-19

Nintendo’s customer support operation has closed its repair service centers, as a preventive precaution to limit the spread of the coronavirus as government officials continue to issue stay-at-home orders. That means that owners of the Switch and other Nintendo consoles and handhelds need to be extra careful with the hardware helping them get through this time spent indoors.

The repair centers are “closed until further notice,” Nintendo said in a statement on its support site. Not only may products sent in for repair from now on be returned to players as undeliverable, but hardware that Nintendo had accepted and was working on before this closure is now effectively stranded at its shut-down facilities.

“If the repair center was able to receive the repair order, it will remain there until repair services resume,” the company said.

“We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your understanding,” Nintendo continued. “Once repair services resume, we will work as quickly as possible to get you playing again.” The company specified that it will honor the warranty for all of its products should that expire during the closure period.

Nintendo of America already closed its headquarters in the Seattle area — hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 spread — and its famous Nintendo New York flagship store at New York City’s Rockefeller Center. The company said two weeks ago that a Redmond, Washington, employee tested positive for the virus.

Nintendo’s U.K. repair operations appear to be running at this time, according to a message posted to the company’s regional website there. However, Nintendo noted that “there may be delays in responses to messages and processing repairs.”