Nintendo Class Action

Late last week there were reports of a filed class action lawsuit against Nintendo for Joy Con drift. I myself must be fortunate because I have owned a Switch since day one and neither of my Joy Cons suffer from this drift issue. At a quick glance it just seemed like another issue of people trying to sue and get paid but this issue has developed quite quickly since last week. I spotted an article on Polygon by Ana Diaz breaking a lot of this lawsuit down and this week an article on Vice games furthering the conversation.

According to the Polygon article the class action suit was filed against Nintendo last week on July 18th for a “malfunction in Joy Con controllers known as drift” At the time the firm had apparently been contacted by 5500 consumers, so either a lot of people are suffering from this issue or a lot of people are trying to get a free payout. It seems as though drifting is an issue that affects most of the modern controllers as there is similar issue with the DualShock 4 and drifting. As with the PS4 controller, there are also many videos and sites online detailing how to fix the issue. Most videos and articles are taking the controllers apart and cleaning them out as dust and debris gets under the contacts fairly easily. I am actually surprised that this hasn’t sparked a lawsuit against Sony and their drifting thumbtacks.

In regards to what the end result the law firm would like to see happen the told polygon “really hard to say. In other cases we’ve had refunds; we’ve had credits, gift cards….in this specific case…its too early on to give a sense of what a win would look like” I find it hard to imagine that this law firm is actual gamers and cares that gamers get their Joy Cons fixed. They most likely want two things from this lawsuit, the want to be compensated well from Nintendo and they also want the notoriety that goes along with filing a lawsuit against a big corporation and winning. As with most class action lawsuits that have been filed against large corporations that are in the public eye the settlement is generally around 5 bucks per user and it doesnt usually get settled for years until people have forgotten about it.

It seems clear that Nintendo wants to get ahead of the bad press on this issue now that the cat is out of the bag and as such has issued a public statement “At Nintendo, we take great pride is creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them. We are aware of recent reports that some Joy Con controllers are not responding correctly. We want our consumers to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we always encourage them to visit their support so we can help”

This is where the article from Vice Games steps in as they caught wind of an internal memo from Nintendo telling support employees that the company will be repairing broken Joy Con controllers free of charge and even for those who have already paid to have the issue fixed, those customers will be receiving a full refund.

This is a great move by Nintendo as it helps eliminate the bad press that was starting to arise especially just a few short months before they launch the Nintendo Switch Lite. Consumers like to know that they are buying a product that the company will stick behind as it helps put your mind at ease that you aren’t wasting your hard earned money. This isn’t a cheap move to make on Nintendos behalf and it takes some people in the boardroom

The law firm had caught wind of this memo and stated that while its a good start this doesnt change anything and they are still strongly pursuing this lawsuit which clearly leads me to believe, as mentioned, they don’t actually care about gamers because Nintendo is doing the right thing here. This firm just wants to get paid.

Doomed Launches

This weekend in Dallas in the annual Bethesda conference, QuakeCon.  Although this year they have rebranded it DoomCon due to the release of the upcoming Doom Eternal in October. The conference opened up with a keynote where they talked a bunch about the next installment in the Doom franchise. But before we talk about the doom series 

In a related story that didn’t overly make the cut last week slides in nicely here, Tim Willits, Studio Director at ID software is leaving the company after DoomCon. He didn’t say much as to what’s next for him but he did mention that he would talk more about his next step after DoomCon. Late last week he said “After 24 years, I’ve decided to leave id Software after QuakeCon...I’ve been extremely lucky to work with the best people in the industry on truly amazing games..All of the games currently in development are in very good hands, my departure will not affect any planned releases” 

Back to DoomCon and games, at the keynote event Bethesda announced that doom 1,2,3 would be playable on pretty much everything from the three major consoles and mobile phones. Not only that but they would be available at the time of the announcement. Doom 1 and 2 are only around 5 bucks each and doom 3 is around 10 bucks.  I thought this was a pleasant surprise, I think it would have been nice if they bundled all three of them together like they have in the past and made the whole package a little cheaper for some 25 year old games but you can always wait for a sale if you are looking for a better price.  Regardless of price is still nice to have some of the touchstones of first person shooters on the switch. 

This unfortunately isn’t where the story ends as trying to play these games from 1993, 1994 and 2004 requires you to create a Bethesda dot net account to play these games which seems a little weird considering the first two games don’t feature any online components at all, just local deathmatch. It’s almost goes part and parcel with a Bethesda game launch nowadays that they are always trying to give the fans what they want and it always seems good until something like this happens or any one of the many issues that plagued fallout 76 at launch. 

When you try to play the games you get a pop up that says “a Bethesda account is required to play this title. Please connect to the internet to continue.  Ok” 

I am not sure what else to say other than this isn’t a good look for Bethesda. They clearly understand this and don’t want any bad press on the Doom name as they have already issued a statement regarding the login screen and explain that it is related to slayers club account so members can earn reward from playing the rereleases.  

Following thatBethesda has also publicly said that the login should be optional and it will be patched very soon.  Overall a fast turnaround considering they just announced these games on Friday and Saturday they are already hard at work on the solution. I do plan to purchase these games for the Switch as they were a large part of my childhood but I may wait for this patch to be released or for a sale.

Grand Theft Casino

Some great aspects of Red Dead Redemption 2 was the gambling with dominoes and poker that Arthur had to play to beat people for the missions. They had the proper feel and speed of gambling that a lot of gamers mess up.  Either they took that DNA or this casino update has been in the works for a long time. Both could be an option as development takes a long time but this week Rockstar launched a casino update for grand theft auto online. 

GTA online is how Rockstar makes so much money and one of the reasons GTA5 has remained in the top ten selling games since it released almost every month. It’s an ever evolving landscape of GTA that you can explore alone or with friends. 

Rockstar also doesn’t have a problem supporting and updating the service as it makes them a fortune. Back in 2016, Rockstar was involved in a lawsuit where financials had to be disclosed and st the time it was revealed that GTA online has made over 500 million in micro transactions with an almost 100 percent profit since they are all digital. That was back in 2016 when it seemed like netbookings weren’t as popular as they are today and sales of GTA5 have almost doubled since. At the annual earnings report for TTWO, the company announced sales of over 95 million for the game as well netbookings for the year of almost 2 billion.  It would be safe to assume that a good chunk of that revenue is in large part to GTA online as the only other major release for the company was RDR2.

This brings us back to the Casino that was launched this week that gamers can gamble with currency purchased from shark cards which can be purchased from real world money and this is where things get a little sticky. As of late, loot boxes have been causing a storm all the way up to congress as they have been deemed predatory to young games who don’t understand that it’s basically gambling. Lots of developers have gone to the courtrooms to argue that its not gambling with representatives from EA even going as far as to call them “surprise mechanics” One thing is clear with the update of the Diamonds Casino in GTA Online, its hard to argue that gambling isn’t gambling. If gambling for real money in real life is age restricted in almost all countries then how can gamers of any age convert real money into fake money to gamble in GTA Online. Hopefully this update can police itself and people can learn quickly that in real life and in GTA online the casino always has better odds than you so eventually they will win. It will also be interesting to see if this gains a lot of public attention like loot boxes have as of late.