Nintendo U.S. is outsourcing its customer support services, which has caused hundreds of contract workers to lose their jobs, IGN reported.

IGN's report is based on communication with several sources, "these sources chose to be interviewed anonymously because they fear retaliation."The media also mentioned that "the United States once had a strict customer support service training and maintenance system, but this system has been seriously affected due to language barriers, poor communication, and overall decision-making issues in how Nintendo transitions from US mainland support to South America outsourcing support."

A source said that Nintendo's US company mainly signed contracts with two local American institutions to fill the gaps in back-end customer support positions, covering "backend team, fraud prevention, finance, refund complaints, customer service, chat record processing, customer phone and email support, refund operation, account ban processing, remote data transmission, maintenance support and other customer support related tasks. Some personnel will stay to be responsible for supervision, but essentially all (local support) businesses will disappear."

IGN noted that although these employees are contract workers, many people "have excellent skills and extensive experience, especially familiar with Nintendo's American systems and processes."In addition, they have worked at the company for many years.Nintendo usually signs an 11-month contract with these employees. When the contract is about to expire, they will be "fired" for several months in order to "receive unemployment benefits, after which the contract will continue to be renewed, and salary increases for each renewal."

Things appeared to have changed in March, when “employees were told that the contract would be terminated and completely phased out this month”.IGN reported that about 200 employees were affected and they would not receive resignation compensation, and Nintendo America has remained silent and contract workers only learned about this through their respective agencies.Meanwhile, contract workers who remained until September "have to help train those who succeed themselves."

Nintendo America is currently outsourcing these jobs to employees in South America.Brazil has undertaken the largest workload, but other countries such as Argentina and Nicaragua are also involved.IGN said that despite the assistance provided by the U.S. employee union, employees in these outsourcing countries are “more fully responsible for handling customer support cases.”Obviously, the recruitment standards for new employees are no longer so strict, and there are language barriers, and the quality of customer support may decline overall.

In this regard, Nintendo has responded to IGN, saying some of the statements "contain inaccurate information."However, since the company did not specify in detail, it is not clear what this refers to.

The full response statement is as follows:

“While we have no news about internal business activities available, some of the statements provided to IGN include inaccurate information. At Nintendo America, we are very grateful to work with several companies and their outstanding contractors over the years to provide users with a high-quality customer service experience. We are working with external partners with deep experience in all service markets in the Americas to continuously improve and expand our customer service model. This model allows us to provide full customer service support for the North American market and the growing Latin American market, better adjusting the service size according to seasonal needs to ensure the stability of support. As always, our priority is to provide excellent customer support, and we are pleased that the services provided by all partners can maintain high customer satisfaction.”