Square Enix is donating half a million dollars towards humanitarian aid efforts in wartorn Ukraine.
On Tuesday, the video game company posted on Twitter that: “Square Enix Group today announced the donation of $500,000 to The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in order to provide humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people who are seeking refuge in neighboring regions.”
According to the UN, over 3 million people have left Ukraine since the war began on February 24th, almost seven percent of the country’s entire population. Another nearly 2 million are displaced within the country, having lost or been driven out of their homes.
The money given to the UNHCR will go helping displaced people find safe haven, whether that means shelter within Ukraine, transport across boarders, or housing in those countries taking in refugees.
Many major video game companies have put forward similar donations. Larger companies like Sony and Nintendo have blocked their content from Russia as well. Square Enix Group, the creator of the internationally popular Final Fantasy series and its spinoff Kingdom Hearts, has not yet announced such a blockade.
Their Tuesday tweet also mentioned an employee fundraiser, in which the company would match employee donations and put the money to UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, all currently active within Ukraine as well as other countries in crisis, such as Yemen, Haiti, and Venezuela.
The announcement was met with both support and criticism, with many people pointing out that other countries have been in wars much like Ukraine for decades now, such as Syria, Yemen, and others, without the outpouring of public support. Others noticed that Square Enix used the word ‘crisis’ instead of the more accurate but more confrontational ‘war,’ which coincidentally or not falls in line with the Russian ban on calling the invasion what it is.
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