After last night’s announcement that Persona 5‘s Joker is coming to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, I finally decided I was going to buy the damn game. Then I bought Super Mario Party.
I don’t know how I made this mistake. Maybe I was just being hasty. Maybe after so many hours of Game Awards my brain was slightly fried. Maybe I just can’t read. But after going to the Nintendo Eshop and then turning on my Switch to check that Smash was downloading, I realised that Mario Party, a game I hate, was downloading instead of Smash, a game I enjoy.
The first thing I did was tweet about it.
People asked me how I did this exactly, and I swear to god, I still don’t know. I have no idea how I did this stupid thing. I immediately turned to my close friend and Smash aficionado Maddy Myers for advice, and she suggested getting a refund. I googled “Nintendo Eshop refund,” and here is what I found:
I tweeted about that too.
So this is my fate: I am now a Mario Party owner. The only thing left to do was attempt to justify my purchase, somehow. So I texted my boyfriend.
So, that’s good, even if he’s not very good at games. But one person isn’t enough for a party. This morning, still angry at myself for my mistake, I texted my roommates.
So at least people will play this game with me. Let it be known, though, I that I also bought Smash.
Comments
31 responses to “Help, I Accidentally Bought Mario Party Instead Of Smash”
One time a dog bought something on PSN and it got a refund.
Cool story Gita….
Are they kidding? No. Not at all. Carelessness is not Nintendo’s problem. Pay attention next time.
They didn’t say it was Nintendo’s problem. It’s just a funny stupid article. No need to throw shade.
Well she may not have explicitly wrote Nintendo’s fault but her tweet and highlighting of Nintendo Eshop guidelines for purchase tells otherwise. While it would be great to get say a 60% refund if u bought the game and played for an hour and didn’t like and realised it was a mistake. It doesn’t change who’s fault the purchase was and how they publicly reacted to it both here and on Twitter. I don’t say fucks sake to the waiter when I accidentally order poached eggs instead of scrambled cos I didn’t read the whole product line
Didn’t see her tweet about Nintendos refund policy then did you? It comes across as nothing but entitled.
Lol customer service from Nintendo not their problem lol.
Meanwhile PSN would likely give you that refund.
XBOX definitely would lol.
Neither of which negates my point.
Wonder if that same policy applies in Australia (the home of refunds).
There is no requirement under Australian Consumer Law for a retailer to give a refund for mistaken purchases.
If the shop had a page saying “buy Smash Bros” and you ended up with a Mario Party download, you’d be owed a refund due to the product not being as described. But simply making a mistake is not the retailer’s problem.
You seem knowledgeable on the subject, do you know why ACCC forced Steam to introduce refunds? Or did I get that entirely wrong? I may have mashed a bunch of different issues together.
Valve’s previous policy was no refunds under any circumstances. However the ACL specifies situations where a retailer is required to offer a refund. Further more, misleading a customer about this right is against the law.
The actual refund system that Valve set up is more generous than the ACL requires though. There is no legal requirement that they offer refunds for games only played for a short period of time, for instance. Pretty much the only legally mandated cases are where there is a “major fault” in the product (defined as something that would have caused you not to make the purchase had you known in advance), or products that don’t match the advertising.
Yeah you’re right. Guess I’ve just been extremely lucky. Sony have been great in the past when I mistakenly purchased a game online.
I can actually see myself doing this.
Thankfully, I almost always buy physical games. Returning those is never an issue.
I’d say in the digital age if you buy a digital game and they can tell that you haven’t played it (I.e. if you pause installation when you realise your mistake) then you should really be able to get a refund.
Doesn’t show good things for diskless consoles in the future…
It works like that for steam.
Yeah I’d heard that, seems weird Nintendo don’t do it. Although pretty sure Microsoft has warnings when you buy that purchases are final.
Nah bro if you keep your playtime on the game short you get no questions asked refund.
All online stores should have a refund period at least until the game has downloaded.
That would cover off mistakes like this, kids buying dumb stuff on their parent’s accounts and trolling housemates thinking buying Life of Black Tiger is funny.
It’d help a lot if people weren’t being pieces of shit and recognised that this is a situation that has affected millions of gamers at some point.
We’ve had terms in the guidelines against author attacks for a long, long time. Chill out, or take your toxicity elsewhere.
This is the kind of drivel and antagonism that has resulted in the closure of comment sections.
Have you deleted a lot of comments I can’t see? Because this comment section was pretty civil until yours.
Yes he deleted mine because, as a reader who this site is supposed to be aimed at, I’ve had enough of the rubbish articles that get published here. Kotaku clearly dont want to be a game site anymore
To the Mod – thanks for referring to me as a “POS” – when my comment didnt say anything nasty towards the author other than she was conceited. Its this type of mod behaviour, instead of listening to your audience and find out why they are upset, that actual makes this a terrible place to visit. For a long time the comments have be BEGGING you and other authors to clean up their act and stop posting rubbish and we keep getting ignored.
What a strange attitude – the belief that the site is “supposed” to be for you, but at the same time you actively dislike vast sections of it?
And your solution is that those sections should change to cater to you – not that you should focus on the things here you like and ignore those you don’t, or find an alternative site you prefer?
I’m a reader too and I like this article. Just because you think the site should revolve around your specific tastes doesn’t make your bitching ok.
What’s with the gendered insult?
This kinda whining/complaining is really quite juvenile and pathetic.
Can’t handle the odd article on Kotaku that, despite many other articles being long form serious games journalism, has a lighter and sillier tone?
Please, go elsewhere.
How long have you been here? Kotaku is a blog, not just a news site. It means that there will be “lifestyle” articles, “humour” articles, “silly” articles, etc. Blogs are an evolution of specialised news sites in the modern digital age of 24/7 connectedness because “real” relevant news do not happen often enough to keep the site continuously updating through the day. Like it or not, that’s how it is. Moreover, as some people have already commented, there’s an audience for that sort of articles.
So you have a few choices: 1. Leave Kotaku and try to find a gaming news outlet with less fluff (good luck with that). 2. Stay and enjoy the actual news when they happen and/or the high quality, in-depth journalistic reports, (understanding that they take weeks–if not months–to produce, and as such, they are infrequent) while avoiding the fluff that bothers you and which is easily identifiable by the articles’ titles. 3. Stay and read everything, complaining inanely about the stuff that you don’t like. It’s not ever going to change anything, but hey, it’s your right, and you can always hope!
What is not an acceptable choice is being rude to the writers or other commenters just because you think your personal preferences have higher value than theirs.
Yeah mine got deleted and it wasn’t even a personal attack on the olaither just that there seem to be a lot more of the kind of personal blog style articles that aren’t news. Big difference between a funny story about what I bought and what could have been a solid piece and refunding digital retail and the fact that some online digital store can do it while others can’t/won’t . And to be fair this kind of article is getting more common on more sites, like ‘things even hard core fans didn’t notice in a game’ or the same article getting reposted with a slightly different shock headline.
The flip side of that is Gita’s article yesterday which included the phrase “Jesus fuck” in capitals. Personally i’m not offended by that all, but it has strong potential to offend, and as a person who seems to be easily offended I would have thought Gita would have more awareness and chosen a different way to express herself. It’s a two way street and the tone of the conversation between authors and commentors is determined by both parties. Obviously you Alex have seen some crummy comments and removed them, which is good, but it would also be nice if some of the devisive and banal articles originating from the American authors received the same treatment. They don’t make Kotaku AU a better place.
Don’t see what the issue is really. Mario Party on the switch is a ton of fun, and i play it with mates whenever they rock up.
In my position, I would actually get more use out of Mario Party than Smash since not many of my friends play smash.
EDIT – Just re-read this and saw Gita doesn’t like Mario Party. I suppose it’s one of those live and learn moments.