You may or may not be familiar with Corporate Social Responsibility, the practice and ethos that big multinational corporations should, you know, try to be good and ethical about their business practices (an idea many outright fail at). Nintendo added such guidelines online back at the end of June, but they’ve only now been translated into English. And there’s a whole of initiatives and policies to peruse.
The bulk of the company’s CSR is split into four different categories: Consumers, Supply Chain, Employees, and Environment. The Consumer section focuses on customer safety and ease of access, nothing too extraordinary. The Supply Chain section has Nintendo commit to not using child labor or slavery (hey, better than the devils over at Nestle) and attempt to use ethical sources for raw minerals and production. But the specific details really start coming out in the Employee section, where it’s revealed that Nintendo, since March 2021, has been recognizing gay partnerships within the company and treats them equivalent to heterosexual marriages.
This is quite a big deal, as gay marriage is currently not recognized legally in Japan, with a ban on the practice very recently upheld as constitutional in an Osaka court. While Nintendo’s policy obviously only affects employees within the company, it still offers them equal recognition for company benefits. NCL is doing the same for common-law marriages as well. While there are a number of other practices worth noting in the whole website, this is one of the most outstanding.
There are other examples worth noting — such as Black @ Nintendo Dialogue (B@ND), an outreach and support group focused on connecting to and supporting the Black community inside and outside of the company, as well as policies both in America and Japan focused on including more women in the company (in an industry known for having less female workers). There’s also quite a bit of detail on maternal and family leave offered on the company, as well as other ways to help work-life balance. And there’s the entire section on the Environment, where Nintendo goes into detail on how they’ve upgraded the Nintendo Switch to be more energy efficient and reduce packaging. (Also, did you know you can send old video game products to Nintendo to be recycled? It’s true!)
You can check out the full CSR website for even more detail.
Leave a Comment
Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
