Why Nintendo Workers Are Complaining of Mistreatment

Nintendo of America workers are, apparently, not having a great time. The company behind Mario, Zelda, Splatoon, and Kirby is, according to reports, not a great place to work, and contractors who are often denied permanent employment opportunities are speaking out.

In a recent video on the delay to Nintendo's shining star of an upcoming game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 (or whatever it actually ends up being called) we quoted Doug Bowser in saying that it's important for Nintendo employees to have a good work-life balance and not get pushed too far.

Turns out not everyone agrees with Bowser that Nintendo staff are treated with care. According to reports, even full-time, permanent Nintendo employees - the so-called red badge staff members - are feeling the pressure brought on by a management system that refuses to hire enough permanent staff to meet needs.

We don't want to speculate too wildly about what's going on behind closed doors at Nintendo, so all we'll be doing in this video is quoting directly from Nintendo workers or former workers, as well as reports from credible news outlets that have interviewed these disgruntled workers. We fully admit that this is only one side of the story, but we feel that it's important to amplify these accounts of workplace mistreatment.

Lots of love,

BretonStripes and Kotor

Sources for this video:

[roflmywaffles]

This honestly came a surprise to me. Despite their balant anti consumer practice I still thought Nintendo at least treated their employees well.

Guess I was too naive

[NeonLightsYT]

Nintendo's happy facade is a shadow of this stupid and stressful work program. A shame, especially when I enjoy most of the products that they put out.

[mittensfastpaw]

Nintendo has never really treated employees that great. The only real hold overs are those that have been there an extremely long time. Those few tend to get better treatment and so forth. Beyond that... the constant flow of articles from former employees paints a grim picture. Kinda like with Disney really, a pretty face upfront but a slave whip behind the curtain.

[Emerald-Fluffie]

The sad reality is… this is just most companies in general…

[MisteRRYouTuby]

The moral of the story: treat people respectfully, like how you want other people to respectfully treat you.

[setsers]

I'm glad that Copyright-Hungry Nintendo is getting the brunt of it now.
This is unacceptable

[Howdoyouchangepf]

To be honest reports of Japanese workers, and video game employees world wide have had reports of horrible condition for ages especially now with the internet, Heck even Nintendo's badge system and employees bouncing off one another for help had been talked about beforehand. I knew it was possibly bad the entire time, guess I just didn't wanna believe it.

[googamp]

Glad to know Nintendo gives their employees the same respect they give their fans.

[gio]

That actually sounds like most Corporate American companies and workers anymore. It's not just Nintendo or Japan. Full time jobs in the US are rare outside of highly competitive secondary degree STEM jobs. Most everything is contract based or part time, and there are few jobs providing health benefits anymore. Wages may be rising but opportunities for permanent work is scarce. Inflation is also making it difficult to commit to in person work due to rising gas prices, and the bottleneck of goods and workers to produce them leading to scarcity. You may get payed well for contract jobs, you better snag up another contract quickly. No company is perfect and maybe Nintendo will finally go through the reforms they need.

[SuperPaperPokemon]

It's a little sad that it seems that King Bowser treats his employees better than Doug Bowser does.

[alberttran]

I did a research paper about Nintendo in my Entertainment Business class at college. This video is informative because I did not know Nintendo had a difficult working culture.

[__-begk]

When Americans learn what working at a Japanese company is like

[Derrakuzu]

now this reminds me of when people said that the people that worked at sega and worked on sonic generations and unleashed left to work for Nintendo instead.
I wonder what's gonna happen to them?

[Epic_C]

I don't think this is a story just specifically on Nintendo. The contractor vs employee situation seems to be similar to a few jobs I've had.

[otakumarcus]

I’m worried that the world of video game job culture will soon start to become unbearable. It was bad enough that this was happening to Blizzard Activision, I don’t want Nintendo to turn into Disney.

[jarrellfamily]

& I thought that Nintendo was the gold standard in employe treatment for video game development but like the worst of video game companies they treat employees like straight trash

[obslam]

Yet the fan boys will always put Nintendo on this pedestal like they can do no wrong. I can almost guarantee there will be someone in the comments trying to defend or deflect this. I follow many Nintendo focused channels and none of them have spoke about this.

[olii]

Usually when Nintendo is mentioned, SEGA is yet to follow. SEGA is hardly better with their employees, they’re too laid back and the salary is messy

[Kth]

Seeing how much Bowser's minions seem to adore him in the RPG games the kidnapping turtle dragon is a better boss then Doug Bowser.

[leedlelel]

I wonder if hallabs (kirby devs) are also treated like this behind the curtains