Nintendo Switch users are reporting that some recently purchased Switch games have arrived with the game cartridge missing from inside the box. Even odder, the cartridges appear to have been swapped out for… googly eyes.
Over the holidays, posts about the bizarre phenomenon began popping up on social media. Multiple players have shared photos of freshly unwrapped Switch game cases holding a lone googly eye in the spot where the game itself should be.
“The Grinch got us this year,” reads one Reddit post featuring a photo of a Super Mario Party Jamboree case with a lone googly eye in the space meant for the game cartridge.
It’s not clear how widespread the issue is, nor is it clear who the culprit is. Some players suspect that warehouse workers somewhere along the supply chain are snatching the cartridges (likely with the intent to resell them) and replacing them with a googly eye so the weight of the missing cartridge goes unnoticed, or for the purpose of making sure the box sounds like it still has a game inside it when shaken.
Though the exact source of the missing game cartridges remains unknown, multiple comments and posts mention purchasing a Switch game from Walmart and finding nothing but a googly eye inside, suggesting one of the retail giant’s warehouses may be the source of the problem.
One Reddit user says they’ve fallen victim to the googly eye switcheroo multiple times.
“Bought Tears of the Kingdom at a Walmart in Arizona, and this happened to me,” they wrote. “Walmart refused to refund/replace, blaming Nintendo. Had to twist their arms a bit, but Nintendo eventually gave me a digital copy of the game. Recently, I went to Walmart to buy Pokémon Violet. I asked if the clerk would watch me open it because I told them about what happened with TotK. Bro was beside himself when I cracked it open to reveal yet another googly eye. They swapped out the game for another (which we also checked).”
Neither Walmart nor Nintendo have commented on the issue. For now, an issue at Walmart warehouses or distribution centers seems to be the likeliest culprit. But it’s also possible that Santa simply ran out of coal this year.