- Gamers sue Nintendo for fee refunds
- Nintendo is currently suing the US government to get its tariffs back
- A second lawsuit wants to return those funds to the consumers who paid them
Following the US Supreme Court’s ruling that President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs were illegal, many companies have taken legal action against the government to recover their tariff rates. This includes Nintendo, but if players have their way, the money will go back to their customers instead of Mario’s pockets.
Spotted by Game FIle, two Nintendo fans, Gregory Hoffert and Prashant Sharan, filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that any money recovered by Nintendo from the US government should be returned to customers like them who purchased Nintendo products with inflated tariffs. Otherwise, Nintendo’s fee refund would constitute unjust enrichment in violation of the consumer protection rules of the state of Washington, the state where the class action lawsuit is filed.
The lawsuit is filed on behalf of US Nintendo customers who purchased a Nintendo product affected by tariffs between February 1, 2025 and February 24, 2026. This would apparently include several Nintendo accessories and the original Nintendo Switch, which saw price increases at the time apparently in response to the US tariffs.
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The class action lawsuit also highlights comments from Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa, who in a May 2025 investor call said, “Our basic policy is that, for any country or region, if tariffs are imposed, we recognize them as part of the cost and incorporate them into the price,” in response to a question about tariffs.
It is not a simple calculation
Nintendo has yet to comment on the legal action, nor have it said whether it would return recovered funds to customers when asked about this in the past, and legal experts have begun to weigh in saying that this lawsuit is unlikely to succeed. Some companies, such as FedEx, UPS, and DHL, have agreed to refund fees to customers, and perhaps Nintendo will do the same (especially if it feels public pressure from this lawsuit).
However, the situation is not simple. First, companies may not have passed on 100% of tariff costs to consumers, and tariff costs are not easy to quantify; For example, companies could have gone into debt to pay fees and had to repay the interest on their loan.
That is, 100% of the money refunded to companies may not be owed to consumers. As such, issuing accurate refunds would be a significant challenge and cause headaches that most businesses may not want to deal with.
Now, if consumers have been asked to bear some of the burden of the tariffs, which have since been repealed, they should be refunded even if it is a challenge to determine precisely what they are owed. It seems like the right thing to do, especially if the company receives a refund from the government.
That said, if I were you, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Unless legal action or public pressure is successful, I don’t think many companies will hand out refunds directly. And, as I’ve warned before, be on the lookout for fee refund scams. Especially since there is so much confusion surrounding the situation, I wouldn’t be surprised if bad actors try to take advantage of it.
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