On Thursday, PC component maker NZXT addressed the controversy surrounding its flex gaming PC subscription service and took accountability.
Earlier in the week, the renowned Gamers Nexus YouTube channel posted an exposé regarding the NZXT Flex gaming PC rental service, calling the program “a shady and manipulative PC rental practice” and referring to the program’s overall value as “predatory”. This has made waves on the internet, and the Gamers Nexus channel itself claims they terminated a lucrative ad deal with the computer parts company over the predatory practices deployed by them.
Consumers outraged have taken to Reddit to complain about NZXT’s predatory practices. One community member noted, “Affirm financing is cheaper than the monthly rental cost,” suggesting it’s better to pay back a loan from Affirm than agree to the rental program. The main problem presented by the Gamers Nexus expose was the misrepresentation of products offered, misleading benchmarks on performance, and the ‘lock in’ nature of rental contracts that make it unfair for the renter. NZXT has responded Thursday with a video posted on their own YouTube channel featuring NZXT’s CEO, Johnny Hou. That can be seen below.
In a mirror blog post addressing concerns, NZXT said “Our intent and belief is that we are creating a new and innovative way for people to game; we recognize that we’ve fallen short in some areas and are committed to taking action to rebuild your trust” regarding their shortcomings on the program. The blog post addressed many shortcomings highlighted by the Gamers Nexus video, including refraining in the future from having influencers promote their products on their own channels, and using clear language to outline the rental program.
While the blog post outlines specific instances—such as, “During Black Friday weekend, we changed the GPU within the Player: Three Flex PC from the 4090 to the 4080 Super due to the EOL of the 4090 graphics card. For those customers that had subscribed with a 4090, we called each one to notify them of the change, dropped their subscription price, and confirmed they wanted to continue with the subscription”—it offers no information regarding customer refunds for these issues.
The NZXT Flex terms of service currently says only orders that are “cancelled before processing” will be eligible for refunds, but the company doesn’t mention how certain customers affected by the acknowledged problems can request a refund for the service.
Consumers looking for more information can visit the official blog post.
