 If this story is true, we are entering a new era and this would be truly mind-boggling and disgusting for Nintendo to deal with, but also we gotta keep in mind the people affected. Nintendo has had allegations for a while now that something was happening with their contract employees and not being treated fairly and today a story has broke where this has reached new levels that it's unfortunate we need to talk about and if there's any truth at all to these allegations, Nintendo is in a very very dark place, especially here in America. Now I am Nathan DeRubble Jantz from Nintendo Prime. If you enjoyed this video, want to know more about this, I appreciate you guys diving into this. Drop a like, subscribe, all that. We do have some giveaways and stuff going on. Details on that down in a pinned comment. But let's just get into this story about some dark days coming to Nintendo. So as you see here it says Nintendo of America's testers say they faced years of sexual harassment. Female game testers at Nintendo had frat house experiences within a gaming company known for its wholesome image. Two years ago a contract game tester named Hannah had a harrowing experience that led her to quit her dream job at Nintendo of America after nearly a decade. Several employees had created a group chat on Nintendo's Microsoft Teams server called the Laughing Zone. It was supposed to be a lighthearted place for coworkers to share memes with one another. That changed when a male translator was added to the group. Soon he posted reddit screenshots about why Vaporeon was the best pokemon to have sex with. Hannah was disgusted by the explicit descriptions. When the conversation turned to Genshin Impact, the translator posted a GIF, a payment, a child character in the game. He posted how it's okay to be sexually attracted to Paymon despite the character's childlike appearances, voice, and personality. Hannah screenshotted the sexual comments and attempted to escalate the situation with Aerotech, the staffing company she was contracted under while working at Redmond Washington headquarters. Nintendo was almost like a nightmare. It's sad because I love Nintendo. I grew up with Nintendo. I was so excited to join Nintendo when I first got there and I thought I was going somewhere, said Hannah. I had my supervisors telling me I was doing such a good job, but by reporting the incident she had set off a chain of events that led her to quit her job testing Nintendo games. Nintendo is not the only company that uses contract labor to test games, but it is one of the most profitable. A corporate responsibility report showed that the net sales of its properties from April 2020 to March 2021 totaled over $13 billion. Contract workers are an essential part of making the company such enormous profits. Nintendo does not publish the number of contract workers in its annual report, but at the time of writing, Nintendo's career page indicates that roughly 25% of the roles it advertised for its North American headquarters were on a contract basis. Full-time Nintendo employees were referred to as the red badges, a term used to describe the bright red stripe on the employee ID cards. The problem was that women were both underrepresented among contractors, but also not often hired into full-time roles. Five sources who worked at Nintendo estimated that the percentage of women contractors in testing hovered around 10% based on headcounts on their own teams. In some projects that sources worked on with several dozen team members, women on the team would number in the single digits. This discrepancy can be explained by the fact that many Nintendo games were not tested by staff who were classified as Nintendo employees. They were employees who worked under the contracting company AeroTech, but even among full-time employees, 37% of Nintendo of America's salaried employees are women, and only 23.7% of its managers are women globally. Hannah also told Kotaku that she struggled to assert her financial worth while testing Nintendo games. After working at Nintendo for nine years, she found out a more junior male contractor in her testing department was making $19 an hour while she was making $16. She asked AeroTech what she could do to close the wage gap and fought for a pay increase for several weeks before she finally landed at $18. One woman said she stayed at the same base wage for six years until she got a higher offer elsewhere and threatened to leave. Another woman was offered double her current pay when at a different company. Hannah claimed that AeroTech management warned her to be less outspoken after she reported the incident. She said that her friends from the work group chat blamed her for reporting the incident and that the only repercussion the translator faced was being assigned sexual harassment training. AeroTech had previously fired one of its contractors for making comments about the color of Hannah's underwear, but the translator who made the sexual comments in group chat was a full-time Nintendo employee. Working for Nintendo meant the third party contracting company couldn't terminate his employment. Several months ago, Kotaku reached out to the Washington-based AeroTech managers to whom Hannah had reported the incident. They did not respond by time of publication. Nintendo staffed its testing departments with temporary employees from the contracting company AeroTech, now reorganized into Aston Carter. According to the National Labor Relations Board, AeroTech has had multiple labor lawsuits filed against it across the years, and AeroTech has previously been embroiled in controversy for discriminatory business practices. Just last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission forced the company to pay over $3 million to settle an anti-discrimination lawsuit in regards to age, sex, and race according to the Chicago Reporter. The federal agency had been investigating the contracting company for racial and gender discrimination since 2008. In a statement to the Chicago Reporter, AeroTech said first and foremost, there is no place for discrimination in our company or our industry. Equal employment opportunity is a fundamental value at AeroTech. Neither a PR spokesperson for AeroTech nor Aston Carter responded to a request for comment. AeroTech split into three different brands last year, two months before it had agreed to pay the discrimination settlement. Among them, the newly formed Aston Carter business unit continued to work with Nintendo to provide the company with contract workers. The union-busting complaint made to the NLRB lists Aston Carter and Nintendo as joint employers. Neither of Nintendo of America nor Aston Carter had responded to the articles about either the April NLRB filing or how contract employees are treated at the workplace. Hannah felt that AeroTech's response was unsatisfactory and she had endured enough inappropriate incidents during her decade-long tenure working on Nintendo products. She quit her job because she felt that her workplace did not adequately protect her from sexually inappropriate behavior from men. According to past and present female employees who work on Nintendo games, there were many others who felt that Redmond Washington office had a problem with treating women with respect. Kotaku spoke to 10 sources for this article who worked at Nintendo at different points of the past decade. They told the story of a corporate culture where sexist behavior was commonplace and very little action was taken to address it. Most requested anonymity because retaliation could mean a loss of job opportunities throughout the gaming industry. These employees worked on games and consoles ranging from the early Wii U era to the present Nintendo Switch generation. Aside from harassment, female contractors also faced issues with trying to advance in the company. I applied for a bunch of other jobs in the industry and they would ask me why I was looking to leave Nintendo after several years. A lack of advancement opportunities was a huge part of that, a former contractor said. Former tester Valerie Allison said she would ask her managers how she could be promoted to a permanent position. On Nintendo's website lists benefits such as parental leave for full-time employees Allison felt pressure to become a full-time employee because she needed stable income and benefits. Kotaku reached out to Nintendo about what kind of actions it took to ensure that women had a fair chance at career advancement. A spokesperson for Nintendo acknowledged our comment request but didn't return with a statement. In order to significantly improve their status at the Redmond office, contractors hoped to be converted to red badges. Unfortunately, many former employees who worked as contractors for years realized that tenure did not help them achieve this goal. Your chance of being converted to full-time was probably worse as a girl, said former product tester who worked on the 2017 hit The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. It's usually guys who get promoted. They are usually all friends. They watch the Super Bowl together. On the same day that Kotaku reported the conditions of contract workers, Nintendo America president Doug Bowser internally acknowledged the media allegations about working conditions at the company. He said Nintendo has zero tolerance for inappropriate conduct including harassment discrimination or intimidation. Kotaku reached out to ask what steps Nintendo had been taken to embrace its zero tolerance policy for contract employees but did not receive a comment by the time of publication. But there are more subtle ways female contractors are kept from cultivating careers at Nintendo of America, said sources. Former testers told Kotaku about a revolving door of female talent and a management indifferent to keeping them. Contractors are giving no explicit goals or benchmarks to hit that might assure a full-time conversion or even a contract renewal. Former tester Valerie Allison worked at Nintendo of America from 2009 to 2014. She asked her managers how she could be promoted to a permanent position but was given a slew of vague suggestions. Nothing was based on metrics. It was things like you get to get more FaceTime than this guy. I'm going to invite you to lunch. You know with so and so. Make sure you talk about these kinds of things Allison told Kotaku. Nothing was specifically work related. You weren't given any of these tools. There were lots of favoritism and croninism said another former contractor who tested games during the 3DS and Wii U era. The assumption was that if a woman was doing well it was because she was friends with the right people. Part of the problem was there were simply not enough women in the testing department to advocate for other women when Nintendo had new full-time openings but the other reasons were more unpleasant. Hannah and two other female contractors also say that in 2020 and prior they experienced harassment from full-time Nintendo workers and fellow aero tech contractors. There was a male full-time employee that was constantly making really gross jokes and comments but he was the friend of everybody there. Everybody loved him Hannah said. Me and other female employees didn't like that it was being said but we didn't say anything because if you did you were called overly sensitive. The power difference between full-time employees and contractors exasperated the inappropriate behavior giving women contractors another reason to aspire to full-time employment. Melvin Forrest has been working in the product testing department since the early 90s and he eventually became the head of the department. Forrest is credited with working on iconic Nintendo titles like Mario Kart Double Dash, Donkey Kong Country and Metroid Prime. Forrest makes the schedule for AeroTech Associates deciding who returns after a project ends so maintaining a good work relationship with him was crucial. This was a problem for female testers who had very uncomfortable experiences with Forrest as a manager. Several sources tell Kotaku that Forrest made inappropriate advances towards female testers among them was Allison who worked under Forrest as a data entry assistant. It was pretty common knowledge that he would make comments hit on people and like to tell associates oh she's so beautiful. She says, former contract tester Chris Oleis who worked at Nintendo until 2014 recalls Forrest went after all the associate girls and that associates would even warn each other to stay away from his desk. A former tester said that he would comment on female associates weight and appearance. However, many felt like they had no chance but to stay on good terms with Forrest. If you were friendly with him you are more likely to be brought back sooner or less likely to be laid off, said Allison. Kotaku was able to confirm that Forrest worked at Nintendo until at least 2017 though the company did not comment on whether or not he was still employed there. Kotaku also attempted to contact Forrest through different contact methods but he did not return a message by the time of publication. In November of 2010, Oleis was invited to Seattle Gala for which Nintendo was a sponsor. He told Kotaku that at the party his supervisor Eric Bush leaned in and told him to ask a female contractor what color her panties were. Bush was also a highly prolific employee whose name can be found in the credits of some of Nintendo's most beloved titles such as Golden Sun, multiple Pokemon titles, and Breath of the Wild. One tester corroborated the incident to Kotaku noting that she heard about the incident through other colleagues before finding out from Oleis himself. According to his LinkedIn, Bush is still employed at Nintendo as a product testing assistant manager. A spokesperson for Nintendo acknowledged our comment request but again did not return with a statement. Bush also did not respond to Kotaku's attempts to contact him. Product testing is really felt like a frat house sometime, said one former tester who worked in the department in 2017. She tried to avoid interacting with men who held so much power within the department but she still had to deal with male co-workers. They would make jokes about gender stereotypes and female characters who got their skirts flipped. When she complained, men would tell her that she had to be tough enough to work in product testing. After she put on a shield against sexual comments at work, her supervisor commended her for being tougher than the girl who had cried at the office. Queer women experience an extra layer of unwelcome behavior and unequal treatment. Hannah is an out lesbian and was open about her sexuality while at Nintendo. She recalled her backup coordinator, a significantly older man who tried to hit on her when she had just started working at the company in 2012. When she reviewed her sexuality, he said, oh you're a lesbian. That's kind of sad. It was a poor first impression for Hannah's lengthy career at Nintendo's headquarters but it wouldn't be the only one. She struggled with her working relationships with male colleagues who would ignore her when she said things like, I'm a lesbian, I don't like you that way. After she explained why she could not return her male colleagues advances, they would ask, oh but are you sure? But you're flirting with me. You're just plain hard to get. The comments made her so uncomfortable that she put her male colleagues at a distance when she believed negatively impacted her career. Another queer tester who worked on Nintendo games for almost a decade claims that she was unfairly targeted by AeroTech for her sexuality. During breaks, she and a fellow female tester was dating would hold hands. She says an AeroTech supervisor called them into the contracting office and admonished the pair for violating the agency's no touching policy, which was rarely enforced for straight couples displaying affection in the office. Kotaku reached out to AeroTech and Ashton Carter, but they didn't return a request to comment at the time of publication. In fact, it was common for full-time Nintendo employees to date precariously employed contractors. A lot of the Nintendo of America red badges had reputation for using the tester pool of associates as a dating pool, Allison told Kotaku. If you were approached by a red badge and they appeared to be making moves on you, other women said that you didn't want to dissuade them too hard. The upsides of being romantically involved with Nintendo of America employees were opportunities and access. The most iconic one was the company's Christmas party, which is off limits to contractors unless they're accompanied by a red badge. To associates who tried to improve their standing, it was worth dealing with the power imbalance if it meant being part of the prestigious Nintendo brand. In February, a tester working for Loctech, a department that conducts the final checks for how games perform on Nintendo consoles, sent a letter on behalf of dozens of testers to Nintendo's leadership. In the letter obtained and reviewed by Kotaku, asking them to improve the tester's working conditions, it stated that the department was unsafe and uncomfortable environments for female testers. Loctech is a deeply uncomfortable place to be as a woman, wrote one anonymous contributor to the letter. I felt like I was treated with a sense of otherness. I have had people act in a way that made me uncomfortable, then asked me not to go to HR about it because I'd be misinterpreting, making me feel guilty about my own discomfort. I've never felt as included in things or as respected. The tester claims that Ashton Carter had acknowledged the letter but did not act due to the anonymity of the employees. Kotaku reached out to Nintendo, the asset had seen the letter, but they had not provided a statement by the time of publication. Women's discomfort didn't stop at distasteful jokes and they didn't always feel that they had a safe way to report incidents. One former contractor claimed a more senior tester stalked her between July of 2011 and February of 2012. He made calls and sent text messages to her phone that one witness felt were disturbing. Kotaku corroborated the reports of his persistent behavior with three other sources. The stalking victims told Kotaku she cried at her desk and had panic attacks every day because the man was friends with the right people. She didn't feel she could flag the stalking to her contracting company. Three other sources corroborated how the stalker had free reign to torment his victim. He said verbatim that he would get me fired if I reported it, the woman told Kotaku. Despite these unwelcome incidents, many women chose to stay at Aerotech for years due to their attachment to the Nintendo brand. Still, sources don't believe that loyalty was reciprocated. You're just a disposable commodity, one former breath of the wild tester told Kotaku. And you're reminded that if you're not willing to do something, someone else would love to have your spot. Nintendo of America has previously acknowledged gender discrimination within the gaming industry. In August of 2021, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser wrote an internal statement condemning the sexual harassment reports and Activision Blizzard. As a result of the reckonings of the college republisher, Nintendo updated its own corporate governing policies with commitment to increase the proportion of women in managerial positions of the company. Kotaku reached out to the Nintendo about what concrete steps the company was taking to improve the gender diversity, but did not receive a comment at the time of publication. However, the document does not address the upward mobility of female contract testers who worked on its games and consoles. Improvements made within Nintendo of America are not guaranteed to trickle down to contract employees at Carter. One current employee said that the HR in the building where most of Nintendo's full-time staff work is actively trying to spearhead diversity and inclusion within Nintendo of America. However, she also acknowledges that each of the different buildings associated with Nintendo's Redman campus are all a little microcosm. There aren't as many chances to meet people from other departments of the company. Nintendo labor troubles are ongoing. On August 7, a second labor complaint was filed with the NLRB against Nintendo and Carter. It accuses the employers of retaliation, discharge, and discipline of concerted activities and coercive rules. The status of this case and the first complaint from April are still currently open. So as I said, this is quite a disturbing story and shows that there is one positive light in this and that is that final note that it does appear that the person in charge of HR at Nintendo's main headquarters in Redmond, Washington is legitimately trying to solve diversity issues and harassment problems. But unfortunately, that person doesn't have a lot of spearheaded say over departments that aren't covered by them, which would include the contracted employees that HR person at the main headquarters can't fix the problems that are inherently happening or at least allegedly happening inside Nintendo of America. And I know a lot of people can read these stories and wonder why wouldn't these employees just leave if they feel so used in this way. And the reality is there isn't a fine affinity attachment to Nintendo. Imagine that you're a tester at Nintendo and you get to test games like Breath of the Wild. Wouldn't you want to stick around at the company so you could test other games like Mario Odyssey and Splatoon 3 and maybe the next Breath of the Wild 2? There's a lot of enticement there where you get to test out all of your favorite IP and your favorite games before they get to the market. And there's a lot of joy in that and a lot of joy of wanting to be associated with the Nintendo brand. But it seems unfortunate that a culture appears to have been cultivated that while maybe not on Activision Blizzard's level, it's still not great and full-time employees are basically not disciplined at all, let alone have their jobs threatened. While part-time employees, obviously we talked to others, there seems to be a difference with part-time and full-time. But the part-time contract employees, the females in particular, are being treated pretty bad. And this is from a number of women coming out. This isn't just like a one-off report. Kataku's obviously been doing this research for quite some time before they released the article. So look, I don't know what to say other than Nintendo of America clearly has a problem. This article coming to light isn't going to hurt the situation. It should only make things better because it should get the attention of Doug Bowser and that should lead to obviously hopefully more actions. I don't know how serious Doug Bowser was taking the allegations because there wasn't any specific incidents listed. Now we have specified incidents and named individuals who were doing inappropriate actions. Like that person, overall managing contract employees, literally creating sexual advances on every single female employee that came through the door and commenting on their looks and their weight and treating people differently because they're lesbians. It's so strange to me. This does not sound like the company I grew up loving because that's not the image Nintendo presents, but the image that you present forward doesn't always match the reality. Now these issues are specific to Nintendo of America. We're not seeing these complaints at Nintendo of Europe or Nintendo of Japan. I know there actually is a little bit of diversity complaints in Nintendo of Japan and they are trying to promote women but we haven't heard anything to this level of like harassment and there's no advancement opportunities or anything like that. And that advancement opportunities are based on who you're friends with, not based on how good you are at your job. That feels a little strange. Normally when you advance in a career, it's because you're really damn good at what you're doing, not because you're friends with somebody. Now we all know certain companies do work that way. You become buddy buddy with the right people. You get handed advancement opportunities no matter how good you actually are. You know, and like they're mentioning of the Super Bowl party, hey, you know, all these people attend a Super Bowl party, they become friends, they get promoted. That's really, really strange. You don't want workplaces to work that way. You want the quality of the work to lead to promotions. So I don't know. This is just a really interesting situation. I don't know what's going to happen from here moving forward. We obviously already have a couple of lawsuits going against Nintendo. Maybe the lawsuits get bigger. But drawing attention to this, you know, assuming that there's any truth, I mean, even a iota of truth to these allegations, Nintendo of America has a problem and it's up to Doug Bowser to get this fixed. There's nobody else you can turn to at Nintendo of America and say, yeah, you deal with this. No, this has to go to the top. Doug Bowser needs to step up and do something. So I hope that this publication, this article, getting out there, even one person willing to name themselves, that Doug Bowser is willing to personally get involved and deal with this because I don't think that Doug Bowser himself treats people these ways. And these allegations happened in Reggie Fizemeira as well. And I don't think Reggie was treating people this way. And there's no accusations against those levels. It's all stuff that's happening so far down the totem pole that Reggie and Doug Bowser would probably not even be aware it's occurring. So now that we are out of the doubt there, all that can happen at this point is hopefully positive steps. So I hope that this story leads to big, big changes inside Nintendo of America and that at some point in the future, female employees feel like they are actually equal to their male counterparts. And we get rid of a lot of that buddy-buddiness that's creating the promotion structure at the lower end of Nintendo. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Let me know your thoughts on this whole situation down below and I'll catch you in the next video.