Gamers sue Nintendo, demanding the company give any tariff refunds back to consumers

Reporting via Aftermath has revealed that two Nintendo gamers are suing the company, arguing that Nintendo should not keep any possible tariff refund that the company is owed.

Back in March, you may remember that Nintendo of America filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government. The Switch-maker is seeking to be reimbursed, with interest, on every dollar it has paid in tariffs under the Trump administration’s IEEPA executive orders. This legal action came about following a Supreme Court decision, ruling that those tariffs were not legally implemented.

Now just a month later, two U.S. residents have filed a class action lawsuit against Nintendo themselves, stating that in the run up to the Switch 2 launch Nintendo passed the cost of those tariffs on to consumers by way of higher prices. As such, they argue that if Nintendo does see a repayment from the U.S. government, that would amount to being paid twice for the same thing.

The suit, which seeks to represent any U.S. consumer who purchased such pricier Nintendo goods between February 2025 and February 2026, states that“Nintendo stands to recover the same tariff payments twice — once from consumers through higher prices and again from the federal government through tariff refunds”. Such recovery of funds would allegedly violate consumer protection laws and would amount to ‘unjust enrichment’.

Nintendo’s CEO spoke about tariffs in May of last year saying that, where tariffs are imposed, the company will see them “as a part of the cost and incorporate them into the price“.

I think it’s hard to argue with the logic of the consumer class action suit here, but the actual mechanism for getting that money back to consumers seems like it might be a bit messy.