Reggie Fils-Aimé Weighs In On Nintendo Worker Exploitation: ‘This Isn’t The Nintendo I Left’
In light of recent reports by Kotaku and others about worker complaints at Nintendo of America, former president and gaming icon Reggie Fils-Aimé was asked about how the company treats its employees. “I know I was able to achieve [a healthy culture], and certainly what’s being described does not seem like a healthy culture,” he told The Washington Post in an interview Tuesday.
Fils-Aimé is currently on a mini-press tour promoting his new business memoir, Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo. Much of the book documents his time overseeing the company’s largest business unit outside of Japan from its Redmond, Washington headquarters. However, it arrives just as many current and former Nintendo of America employees are speaking up about exploitative working conditions at the beloved gaming company, following news of a labor complaint reported by Axios.
At the heart of this arrangement is a contractor system that employs hundreds of testers, customer service reps, and other “associates” in a permatemp status where they receive low pay, poor benefits, and no guarantee of job security even as they do the same work as people in full-time positions. As first reported on by Kotaku, current and former employees say this creates a two-tier system where permatemp associates feel like second-class employees, both in terms of compensation and the lack of respect from top brass.
“As I read the stories and I read the reports it struck me that this wasn’t the Nintendo I left,” Fils-Aimé told The Washington Post. He went on to point out that during his tenure from 2006 to 2019 he held regular lunch meetings with employees that permatemp associates were free to sign up for and attend. One former associate told Kotaku they were aware of the lunches but had never heard of contract workers being allowed to attend. They and others did not even have badge access to the main building in which they were held.
