Former Nintendo employee exposes his truth about his unfair dismissal

For many gamers, perhaps one of their great dreams is to see themselves working in the video game industry in large companies such as Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo, dreaming up the perfect jobs. However, the experience of a former Nintendo employee fired earlier this year has decided to speak out about his firing and expose the truth.

Mackenzie Clifton interviewed exclusively for Axios, has decided to speak out about his dismissal at Nintendo this year.

“I hope that sharing this story can get more and more people thinking about how the games industry works and how these companies, that everyone’s come to know and love as providers of fun entertainment, are so much more than that,” Clifton tells Axios.

According to Axios, the former Nintendo employee was a game tester. He was fired because of the disclosure of confidential information, given as evidence a tweet that Clifton made where he would have talked about a game he was testing.

However, Clifton believes this is not the real reason for his dismissal and claims that it is something more.

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Earlier this year, during a Q&A portion with Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser, Clifton asked, “What does NoA think about the unionization trend in QA in the games industry as of late?” they told Axios. (Without specifics or names, the incident was first reported by the gaming website Kotaku.)

Clifton’s question wasn’t addressed in the meeting. But later that day, Clifton says, a supervisor from Aston Carter called them, saying it was a “downer question” and advising them to direct such inquiries to the contracting firm, not Nintendo.

Clifton was “baffled and kind of angry.” Less than a month later, Clifton was fired.

Nintendo has denied that unions had anything to do with Clifton’s dismissal, instead saying the tester was let go for publicly disclosing “confidential information.”

It is worth mentioning that the Axios interview details Clifton's history with Nintendo, including the projects he was involved in and his "personal struggles" within the company, so if you want to read it in full you can click here.

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