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Nintendo Faces Continuation Of Seizure Lawsuit
Thanks to 2TheAdvocate for its article discussing a lawsuit against Nintendo regarding their videogames causing seizures. The suit, which has been in progress since July 2003, claims that Nintendo "failed to report that its games contain defects that presented a 'substantial hazard' and create an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death." In Nintendo's defence, they claim that they "instituted some recommendations... [including] a limit on the number of times per second a light can flash, and a limit on the brightness of certain lights and their duration on the screen." As a result, "the number of seizures reported to the company by consumers has dropped from 22 in 1999 to six in 2003." The trial will continue until later this month.
Please... people aren't suing the makers of picket fences for giving children epileptic seizures as a car drives by it, so why are they attacking video game makers? This is ridiculous... Next thing you know people with red-green color blindness are going to be suing city and state governments for picking red and green for stop-light colors (red-green color blindness means you cannot differentiate between the two colors).
And how was Nintendo expected to know that there games presented a miniscule risk of causing epilepting seizures??? I mean, that's not a normal part of the debugging process is it (buffer overruns fixed - check!, memory leak fixed - check!, doesn't cause seizures - "we'll just slip this one under the rug). Should Nintendo be expected to hire a panel of 1000 seizure prone patients to test the game? And the number one question is : Why aren't manufacturers of strobe lights being sued???
20 fucking poeple out of the millions that play nintendo? .000002% of pople will probably be alergic to everything.
You know, it sucks to be them, but
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
If the parents were reponsible, they should know better than to let their seizure prone children play video games. There's a warning on the inside of every instruction manual. Note to parents: read them! Nintendo shouldn't have settled out of court the last time they were sued. That was like an admission of guilt for them. This time the case should be thrown out of court.
Why are we even considering discombobulating an entire industry over a tiny fraction of the population? There's already warnings on the games. And where the hell is a rational suggestion like having a "No-Seizures Mode" switch on the back of every console to severely cripple it's graphics engine?
"Since those recommendations have been instituted, the number of seizures reported to the company by consumers has dropped from 22 in 1999 to six in 2003."
So, there were 22 seizures reported in 1999. That is a really miniscule number as it is. Then, in 2003, there were only 6 known seizures reported - in comparison, that's virtually nothing at all.
How on EARTH can this family believe that "Nintendo should have reported that its video games were not safe and not suitable for use because they triggered seizures" , and expect that Nintendo should "rank all games according to the seizure risk, reformat all its games to reduce the chance of seizures, fund a nationwide advertising campaign to inform the public about the chance of seizures, allow all game owners to trade high seizure risk games in for low seizure risk games and to establish a refund program so everyone with Nintendo games can get their money back" ? This really looks to me like they're taking it way too far - it's not Nintendo's fault that their son had a seizure: Video games cannot and do not suddenly make seizures happen by some bizarro magic - there has to be a pre-existing condition for them to even take place. Nintendo shouldn't be expected, by anyone, to have to go back through all their games to 'reformat' them, either - if people have a condition involving seizures, and they get seizures from video games, then no amount of going back and making adjustments to hundreds of old video games is going to change that fact. And again, that fact is not Nintendo's fault (or anyone's, for that matter).
And as for wanting the court to order "Nintendo to put warnings about the possibility of video games triggering seizures on the video game packages and on the screen while the game is in use" , well, that's just ridiculous. 1: They already have those warnings in the packaging and manuals. In Europe, they often include an additional seperate card/sheet to warn about seizure risks, AS WELL AS the warnings printed in every single manual for every single game and console released. And 2: Did they even consider that the majority (going by number of seizure complaints compared to game sales, as in the article), who don't get these seizures, might be annoyed by having the view of their game obscured by some on-screen warning they don't need? Actually, come to think of it, did these folks even check the warnings and manuals and stuff through with their kid before letting him play the game(s)? I would hope that they did take the preventive measure of reading the included warnings. If not, why not? They certainly seem worked up enough about their son getting a seizure to try and sue somebody who's not responsible for it over the matter.
Also, how come they're not also suing the likes of Sony and Microsoft, and trying to demand that they do the same things as they're trying to demand of Nintendo?
What's next? Are they going to sue the makers or wearers of stripey shirts for triggering their kid's pre-existing condition, too?
Japanese Seizure Robots!
(Don't click if you really get seizures!)
There is only so much you can expect a company to do for such a small percentage of the population. For example, I expect food companies to properly label their products with ALL ingredients, to have 800 numbers to call if this isn't possible given the size of the package, and to warn about possible contaminants from other products manufactured at the same facility. This is a reasonable expectation that imposes no undue burdon on the company. I certainly don't expect them stop making the products my kid is alergic to or to include so many warnings in bold print across their logo that people stop using the product. That's just silly. The relevant information in small print on the back of the package is more than sufficient.
Nor do I expect other kids to have to stop eating foods my child can't have. I'd appreciate it if they washed their hands every now and then but I'm certainly not going to sue them for eating a PB&J.
Parents need to do their job, watch their children, and stop expecting the rest of the world to do this for them. Kids have parents for a reason. If the courts are in any way just then Nintendo will win this case.