Nintendo urged a court to dismiss a lawsuit demanding that it pass tariff refunds on to customers, saying that people who bought a Switch console or other products have no legal right to refunds that Nintendo is due to receive from the government.
Nintendo said in a motion to dismiss yesterday that plaintiffs are “ask[ing] this Court to invent a legal duty out of whole cloth to retroactively re-price completed sales simply because the legal landscape has changed.” Nintendo said the plaintiffs “have no legal entitlement to the tariff refunds Nintendo stands to receive.”
The lawsuit was filed in April by two customers who seek to represent a class of all US residents who bought Nintendo products from February 2025 to February 2026. California resident Gregory Hoffert and Washington resident Prashant Sharan filed the class action complaint in US District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleging unjust enrichment and a violation of the Washington Consumer Protection Act’s prohibition on unfair or deceptive acts.
“Nintendo engaged in unfair acts by: (i) raising prices due to tariffs; (ii) failing to disclose that it intended to seek tariff refunds; and (iii) retaining tariff refunds despite having passed the costs to its customers,” the lawsuit alleged. In their unjust-enrichment claim, plaintiffs said Nintendo profits were “unjustly obtained as a result of its price increases on goods subject to unlawful tariffs.” Nintendo raised prices for the original Switch console by $30 to $50 and added $5 to $10 to the prices of various Switch 2 accessories.
Nintendo told the court that “the doctrine of unjust enrichment does not apply when a party voluntarily pays a purchase price and receives a product in return.” Nintendo said plaintiffs “received exactly what they paid for: Nintendo products that Plaintiffs knowingly and voluntarily purchased at the advertised price. Nor is there anything ‘unjust’ about Nintendo retaining money that it may receive from the government as tariff refunds. The fact that Nintendo stands to receive tariff refunds does not give Plaintiffs any legal entitlement to those funds.”
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2026
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Nintendo says users voluntarily paid higher prices, have no right to tariff refunds
(arstechnica.com)
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I'm no lawyer, but it sounds like they're kind of right? It's a case of "you're right but you're still an arsehole."
However, I think if Nintendo isn't going to refund consumers, they have no business seeking refunds from the government.
I never really thought the lawsuit against Nintendo had much merit. If costs go up, so too must prices, and demand goes down. People who support the price increases and continue to buy at the jacked-up prices are sending the message that price has not affected (their) demand. I do not believe they should be made whole because they are not out anything. They saw the price and they chose to pay it. Like everyone who buys a Steam Deck post-increase, or Xbox, or PlayStation. The Steam Machine was always gonna cost about $1000, that's been expected since it announced, and it hasn't increased in price (AFAIK).
But, again, not a lawyer.
However, I do firmly believe that if Nintendo is not going to make consumers whole, it similarly does not deserve to get made whole. For the same reason. Those tariffs were the cost of doing business. And they chose to do that business, and they did so... by raising prices. So it seems if you can't have one increase without the other... you can't have one refund... without the other.
Except that the tariffs that were placed on Nintendo's products were ruled unlawful and refunded (to Nintendo).
Imagine that it was found a city tax was calculated incorrectly - you'd expect a restaurant to refund customers, not keep the extra sales tax for themselves.
they used the tariffs as a reason for the higher price. the refund should also go to the consumer. nintendo did not lose any money on this, we did.