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submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by Deep@mander.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world

Two gamers have filed a class action lawsuit against Nintendo, alleging that the company will be unjustly enriching itself with any refund it secures from the U.S. government over widespread tariffs last year that, among other things, hiked the prices of Nintendo hardware and accessories.

“Unless restrained by this Court, Nintendo stands to recover the same tariff payments twice—once from consumers through higher prices and again from the federal government through tariff refunds, including interest paid by the government on those funds,” the suit states.

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[-] FUCKING_CUNO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 268 points 2 weeks ago

What is the logic behind giving a company money for the tariffs? The costs were invariably passed to the consumer, so how does paying the company make any sense?

[-] i_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.ca 239 points 2 weeks ago

The logic was “these companies ate the cost” and when confronted with the fact that prices went up and the costs had been passed on to consumers, the clarification they provided was “nuh uh”.

[-] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 49 points 2 weeks ago

and when confronted with the fact that prices went up and the costs had been passed on to consumers, the clarification they provided was “nuh uh”.

the argument is, when a price goes up, there will be fewer sales and therefore less revenue/profit

[-] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 54 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Which makes me want to say things that would get me banned for multiple reasons.

[-] danc4498@lemmy.world 95 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

This is America. You’re not a person unless you’re a corporation.

Is it expensive to file corporate taxes in the US? It really sounds like if everyone represented themselves as a corporation they would have more rights.

[-] forty2@lemmy.world 35 points 2 weeks ago

If you're looking for a new rabbit hole to explore...theres an entire crowd of people who firmly believe that the government creates a corporate version of you when you're born, and that your name in CAPS on the birth certificate is evidence of this.

[-] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 25 points 2 weeks ago

There's also endless content of them confidently presenting these arguments to judges when they've broken laws and being immediately shut down by said judges.

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[-] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

the birth certificate

Berth certificate, making us all boats and therefore subject to maritime law.

It sounds like a stupid joke because it is but also one of their things.

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[-] suicidaleggroll@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago

It didn't take long to go from "corporations are people" to "the only people that matter are corporations"

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[-] velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 39 points 2 weeks ago

The companies are the ones who paid the tariffs directly and then passed the cost onto their customers.

[-] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 33 points 2 weeks ago

The companies paid the tarrif, they get the refund.

The fact that tariffs allowed some companies to demand more money, is related but not causal, some companies will have had to eat shit because the market wouldn't bare the increase.

I'd love for the lawsuit to succeed and it set the precedent that when governments issue refunds they can force companies to pass it on to the customer, but I think it's unlikely.

It's also complicated by the way pricing works.

If the tarrif is for $15 but the uncertainty allowed a company to increase prices by $20, how much should the customer be refunded?

And what if the tarrif was $15 but the market only allowed a $10 increase and the company ate shit on the other $5?

Now what if none of these numbers are set in stone and all of the numbers are guesswork? Should the government audit all companies that changed their prices?

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[-] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago

There’s no logic. They don’t know how to fix the things they broke.

Taxpayers paid the tariffs once when prices got hiked, paid the resulting inflation costs, now we are paying those companies back with taxpayer money, which will continue to drive up inflation again.

We’re paying 4 times.

[-] Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 13 points 2 weeks ago

What is the logic behind giving a company money for the tariffs?

Well, the logic is the fact that the tariffs were illegal.

The honourable thing to do would be to pay that money back to the customers, but that would make the shareholders sad and grumpy, so it's never going to happen.

[-] mkwt@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago

The logic is real "dumb" or simple. The company that paid the tariff gets the refund.

Tariffs are paid at the port of entry and before you are allowed to physically get the goods out of the port. So the payer is not always the manufacturer. Sometimes it's an importer or middleman. Sometimes a retailer. It could be you if you shipped in a package from overseas.

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[-] Asafum@lemmy.world 135 points 2 weeks ago

Nintendo: you know what? Fuck you. Our prices just went up for you. Games are $120 now. Fuck you, you'll still buy our pokemon slop we spent 0 effort making. Mario? Yep, $120, but now when he jumps he says "fucka youuuu!" You'll still buy it, because Mario.

[-] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 14 points 2 weeks ago

I've been ootl on Pokemon since y/x, and even was barely paying attention before someone else bought it for me. But the shit I saw when sword shield(? First switch title) was wild. They really were just phoning it in, and people still bought everything else they dropped! The only reason I got a switch was for prime 4, and likely won't be getting a switch 2. Sucks watching my nostalgia be abused in real time.

[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 25 points 2 weeks ago

You can still enjoy the games you are nostalgic for with emulators.

[-] Cherry@piefed.social 13 points 2 weeks ago

I love how nintendo are switching our youths back towards old school tactics. Emulators and piracy are having their renaissance.

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[-] HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social 10 points 2 weeks ago

I got tired of the new games being shit and/or not done when. I think last game I bought new was No Man's Sky (yes I know, its decent now, I still play it sometimes), after that disappointment I just gave up. I haven't been paying attention on whats coming, whats the newest big game.. I just play emulators. I play the games that I wanted to play when I was a kid, but couldn't. My gaming journey started with Amiga 500, then I got a NES, after that a Game Gear, then a Play Station 1. So I've been gaming a lot of SNES stuff lately, I downloaded a bunch of Atari titles. Sega games are next on the list.

Theres so much to play, I will die before I run out of stuff. I think I'll never buy a new game ever again.

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[-] IzzyScissor@lemmy.world 70 points 2 weeks ago

Friendly reminder that the Boston Tea Party was about tariffs. We know what works.

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[-] LoafedBurrito@lemmy.world 59 points 2 weeks ago

We won't see a cent of the money stolen from us by Donald Trump and his gang of pedophiles.

My company lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in tarrifs. We passed those on to the customer since we couldn't take a 50% hike on costs.

We have no way to refund money we don't have.

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[-] Avicenna@programming.dev 54 points 2 weeks ago

Like everything else Trump does this too was a grift by him to funnel money to the rich. He should be a part of this law suit.

[-] 7101334@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

He's criminally protected from any official acts while in office, remember?

(A Supreme Court decision made during Biden's term, it should be noted - he was also criminally protected from any consequences of his official acts as president, and they specifically gave the example of a president using Seal Team Six to assassinate their political rivals. Biden didn't even try using that power against Trump in any way. Assassination was probably off the table lmao but he could've done extrajudicial surveillance or such. He didn't, because they're all owned by the same oligarchs and Zionazis.)

And a civil lawsuit would be paid by... the taxpayers.

You don't get to win when the other side makes the rules. You have to stop playing the game, or get as close as you can.

[-] P1nkman@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

He's not protected from things moving towards him at terminal velocity. That's the other solution.

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

I get what you're saying, but it's gonna bug me if I don't point out that the only direction you can achieve terminal velocity in is down. It's the maximum speed something can achieve by just falling

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[-] MithranArkanere@lemmy.world 30 points 2 weeks ago

We should do a blanket class action lawsuit against all corporations throughout history, demanding all the wages they owe, refunds for the prices they gouged, and the artificially created inflation.

Or they could settle by paying for worldwide universal healthcare and UBI.

[-] FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago

Fuck settling. Every time we’ve settled with the capitalists they just claw everything back 10 years later. We need to permanently make them extinct.

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[-] MehBlah@lemmy.world 29 points 2 weeks ago

Heh. Yeah right. They passed that tariff cost on to you but no way will they pass the refund on.

[-] PM_ME_YOUR_BOOBIES@lemmy.world 31 points 2 weeks ago

Hence the reason of the the lawsuit

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[-] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago

Let’s see more of this.

[-] hperrin@lemmy.ca 24 points 2 weeks ago

And the players should win this case. It’s pretty obviously true that Nintendo would be recovering tariff money twice.

[-] BygoneNeutrino@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago

I think it's presumptuous to assume that the increase in prices that just happened to be identical to the tarrifs had anything to do with the tarrifs.

[-] hperrin@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 weeks ago
[-] pivot_root@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

Almost perfect. You forgot to replace "community chest" with "shareholder portfolios"

[-] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 weeks ago

Customers should get the refunds as this is business already transacted. Nintendo should get a "loss of potential sales" award due to it being priced out for many consumers, due to the tariffs. How that number would be determined is best left to people smarter than me.

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[-] chilicheeselies@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago

Its even messier. Nintendo is a customer of the companies that produce the discrete parts, and paid tarriffs on them. Then they sell to a retailed at wholesale who sells to the consumer. The retailer may or may not also have paid a tarrif on the finished product. So what waa the final retail proce composed of? How much of it was Nintendo's? How much of it was.... Say.... Walmart? Who is on the hook for it for the consumer?

What a fucking mess.

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[-] Pacattack57@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago

I wonder why they chose Nintendo. To base this class action off of. They could have chosen any company to go after, like Walmart or Apple.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 weeks ago

Because Nintendo have been litigious cunts the past few years and it's poetic justice?

[-] Psythik@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Because Walmart doesn't sue their customers for buying and improving upon their products.

Nintendo bites the hand that feeds. Treats their biggest fans like piles of subhuman garbage. Short of Nestlé, very few companies deserve a taste of their own medicine more than Nintendo. Fuck them.

Edit: And they've been this way for as along as I can remember. Back in the early 90s, Nintendo tried to sue to stop Game Genie from becoming a thing. Sega, on the other hand, made it an officially licensed product! Nintendo has never had any chill. I wish they were the ones that lost the console war instead of Sega. They don't deserve to be as popular and beloved as they are.

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[-] artyom@piefed.social 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Nintendo stands to recover the same tariff payments twice—once from consumers through higher prices and again from the federal government through tariff refunds

Uh...those are the same funds? They didn't just pocket the tariff fees, they had to pay them in order to get a refund.

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[-] Tharkys@lemmy.wtf 10 points 2 weeks ago

Here is the thing. If they win, it's great for them. However, all the other companies are currently updating their legal documents to reflect that they will get any forms of reimbursement and not be passing them on to the consumer. Not only that, but they are not planning on reducing the price of any of the products. So, even if the tariffs dissappear, they still win.

The only way to win the game is to not play it.

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this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
1134 points (99.7% liked)

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