- If you give a thousand fish a thousand credit cards, they’ll make the greatest purchase known to man.
There are few things worse than finding out someone’s swiped your credit card info. It can happen if you buy something from a shady website or use a compromised ATM, for example.
But you’d never suspect your goldfish could be behind the crime.
Unlikely as that seems, it happened. The residents of a Japanese YouTuber’s fishbowl managed to make a purchase on his Nintendo Switch. Not only that, they leaked his credit card info to the internet.
The bizarre incident was due to an experiment where a motion detector controlled a video game character based on the fish’s movements. But the game crashed and left the fish free to explore the features of the internet-capable game console.
Through an immensely unlikely chain of commands, the fish managed to find their way to the Nintendo eShop. By the time their owner noticed what was going on, it was too late — the fish had made a purchase.
So, what have we learned? Don’t leave your little ones with your credit card unattended, even if they’re fish.
Gamer Fish
The unfortunate owner of the fraudster fish is a Japanese YouTuber who goes by the nickname Mutekimaru. He uploads and streams video game content on his Mutekimaru Channel — but the stars of the show are his fish.
Mutekimaru has rigged up a system that can control video games by reading the ways the fish move. A camera monitors the aquarium and motion-tracking software translates the video feed into inputs that it feeds to various video game consoles.
His channel has nearly 93,000 subscribers, so the fishy gamers are clearly fairly popular. And they have had some success too.
In 2020, Mutekimaru’s fish friends managed to beat Pokémon Sapphire in merely 3,195 hours, according to Techspot. Sure, a human can do it about 100 times faster but hey — it’s still pretty impressive for fish.
A Fishy Shopping Spree
The fish were in the mood for another challenge, so Mutekimaru decided to see if they can beat both Pokémon Scarlet and Violet on Nintendo Switch. He hooked up his fishy gaming system and fish went at it.
Now, thousands of hours of fish-based gameplay can get pretty boring. Mutekimaru often leaves the fish to their gameplay unattended. After all, he’s not supposed to help them.
So, that’s just what he did. Mutekimaru went about his daily life and the fish successfully won several Pokémon battles on livestream.
But then, after 1,144 hours, the game unexpectedly crashed. The game application shut down and threw the system back into the main menu.
However, the crash didn’t affect the motion capture software. It continued to receive input so it did what it was supposed to do and started operating the Switch.
After hours of aimlessly clicking and scrolling, the fish activated Nintendo’s web store. Then, in an event that defies all likelihood, they managed to buy 500 yen (about $5) worth of Nintendo eShop points using Mutekimaru’s credit card.
And while they did so, they broadcast his credit card information live on the internet.
After buying the points, the fish used them to purchase a new premium avatar for Mutekimaru. They also downloaded the Nintendo 64 emulator, and changed his account name from “Mutekimaru” to “ROWAWAWAWA¥.”
Appropriately aquatic.
No Harm Done
The fish had free reign of the console for seven hours until Mutekimaru realized what was going on. He immediately powered down the system and began checking what havoc the fish had wreaked.
Seeing that they’d spent some of his money, the YouTuber did the one thing anyone in the situation should. He contacted Nintendo and asked them to refund the purchase.
We’d love to know how he explained to customer service that his fish used his credit card without authorization.
But whatever he said, it was convincing. Nintendo agreed to reverse the purchase and gave Mutekimaru back his five bucks.
All in all, the whole debacle cost him only 10 Nintendo points for his new avatar. Perhaps that’s worth it to have a story nobody who hears it could possibly believe.
And perhaps he learned that as dull as watching them can be, he shouldn’t leave his fish to game without a watchful eye.
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