Topic: No refund for eshop games that have performance issues?

So I just recently stumbled upon one of these nasty situations when I bought an e-shop game from 3rd party publisher, I already had it on PC, but I just wanted to take it onto Switch and see how it plays there, and to my dissapointment it performed very poorly, like really, it was constant 15-20 fps, like, all the time.

Then, of course, I tried to reach to nintendo support and told them that it runs poorly, hurts the eyes and no way I'm gonna play it in that state, please give me my refund and I won't bother you again.

Some of you probably know the end of story, but yeah they just provided some generic copy-pasted text from the support section of their site, as I had no right to request a refund whatsoever. As soon as I clicked on a BUY button inside the eshop there's no turning around. Like even if you have real troubles with a purchased product they just don't care, heh. They're better off not noticing the problem than put some effort and solve it the civil way.

I didn't find such topics lying around here, but it really surprises me, b/c seems like I'm not the only one. I talked to a couple of my friends and colleagues and they had a somewhat matching experience.

To me this is something that really really discourages me from buying anything from the eshop from now on.
I just mostly buy 1st party stuff for the Switch so I wasn't aware there're issues with smaller or mid-tier studios not having enough time and resources to really optimize their products, it looks like they're just pushing those fast ports onto the console, slap a premium price on it and call it a day.

Thanks, yeah, I'll try to call them directly. Maybe that'll help.

And to add more to it it's not that I'm frustrating about losing money. It's just kinda saddens me that this is the service we expect in return for paying premium. Like, this is already the norm for everyone.

But what I really expect for extra buck I pay is the service that takes care of its content, sanitizing it, pushing some stuff out if they don't match certain criteria. 30 fps minimum? For sure. No stutters during very crowded scenes? Yes. Why nobody expects that from paying premium?

I can cope with such cases when I go to Steam b/c I can easily refund anything at any time withing certain constraints, and games are much much cheaper there anyway (talking about 3 times cheaper at sometimes). But nintendo, really? They just need to put some filters on their eshop gates.

Usually Nintendo pulls the game from the eShop and gives a refund if the developer isn't able to fix the problem (for example the unbeatable version of Last Ninja 3 on the Wii Virtual Console). If the game fulfils all the (low) standards and works as described on its eShop page there's nothing you can do about it. In such cases it's better to contact the 3rd party directly to get a refund or code for a free game from their catalog.

Performance issues aren't in the same category as broken games or system damaging software though, so in most cases you should watch a video or a professional review before you buy.

Sometimes complaining directly to the dev or publisher can also yield results.

When I made the mistake of buying Myst for the 3DS on the eShop, while the developer wasn’t able to give me a literal refund, they actually sent me a physical copy of a different game (which I picked from their catalogue), completely free, as an apology for making such a terrible port.