Gamers Report That Nintendo Is Giving Refunds For 'Scarlet And Violet'

The absolute state of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has been the talk of the internet for several days now, and gamers report that even Nintendo, notoriously tight-fisted when it comes to its customers' purchases, is willing to give out refunds.

It's certainly reasonable to say that Game Freak's highly ambitious attempt at making a fully open world Pokémon game needed a lot more development time than The Pokémon Company's strict three-year development cycle allowed. While lots of players report that the core gameplay is good and arguably the most fun Pokémon has ever been, many agree that the game from a performance standpoint is nothing short of atrocious.

Pokemon Scarlet has major performance issues on the actual hardware and this is too funny. Running around in the world I get major frame drops. Entities just popping into existence. This is a joke pic.twitter.com/R6Oc5VNhi9

— Penten | Gold (@GoldilocksP4) November 11, 2022

Aside from the game-breaking bugs that some players have spun into viral Twitter clips, the standard Scarlet and Violet experience includes tons of lag (particularly in water areas), wild framerate drops (particularly in populated areas), floors disappearing from under Pokémon during battle (particularly when the Pokémon are on different elevations) and lots and lots of "pop in." Textures and shadows seem indecisive on whether they want to show up or not, and wild Pokémon often treat walls as suggestions rather than actual barriers.

Pokemon Scarlet/Violet Review:
-Awful Performance
-Awful Graphics
-Most Fun I've had in a Pokemon game

— SmallAnt (@SmallAnt) November 21, 2022

While some gamers are embracing the jank as part of an otherwise compelling experience, others can't look past the game's technical flaws, and Nintendo is apparently understanding.

On /r/Pokémon, a user reported that they were able to get a refund on their preordered copy of S&V after an hour of playtime.

"I just got my money back for Pokemon Scarlet," user sellouthipser wrote. "A lot of people don't know this, but Nintendo will, on rare circumstances, offer a one-time refund for you."

The user went on to post the text that convinced Nintendo to give them the refund:

Hi there! I bought Pokemon Scarlet last night, and I played for about an hour or two and unfortunately the game runs incredibly poorly. I don’t normally reach out in these instances, but frankly I think would really appreciate a refund as I can’t see myself enjoying playing this in its current state. Would that be at all possible?

"If you genuinely are disappointed with the game, I'd strongly urge you to do this instead of complaining or trying to raise awareness of the game's issues," they wrote. "Try it out and upvote to spread the awareness that you actually can get a refund for a digital game."

The user reported that they got their refund quickly after making the request, but it's unclear if this will be a common experience for any other players looking to get their money back.

Other Redditors in the thread said requests were forwarded to customer service reps who would get back to them in "1-3 days." One user reported the customer service chat function was disabled altogether. This led users to speculate that Nintendo is in a damage control cycle as refund requests pile up, and they're likely deciding how lenient it should be in granting what is almost certainly a hefty amount of refund requests.