We live in a very dark and uncertain world. Every day might bring something bad for people to deal with in one form or another, and so it’s hard to imagine anything good happening at times. Even within the video game industry, all sorts of bad things happen due to publishers, developers, gamers, etc. So how about we talk about a rather inspiring and uplifting story? The story comes from last year but was just released to the public. It’s a tale of a young girl who was kidnapped and yet saved because of her Nintendo Switch. We promise that this is a real story.
The tale tragically begins when a young girl of just 15 makes a “friend” on the internet named Ethan Roberts. Roberts lived in Arizona, and the girl lived in Virginia. But after “befriending” her, Roberts came to Virginia and abducted her.
The twist is that he lets the girl bring her Switch with her. Why would he do that? Likely to keep her pacified. But that would prove to be his downfall.
You see, she was able to connect to the internet via her Switch, and that allowed her to download games and watch YouTube. Since she was online, it sent a notification to her friends, alerting her that she was online. One such friend realized that it was odd that she’d be on her Switch given her “kidnapped status,” so she called the police, who alerted the FBI.
The FBI went to Nintendo and, through their help, were able to find the IP address of the internet that the girl’s Switch had connected to. Through that, they found Robert’s apartment in Arizona and saved the girl.
As ABC reports, it was a situation that could’ve gone a lot worse. The teen in question was gone for 11 days, and if it wasn’t for that Switch notification, it could’ve been much longer if she had been found at all.
Even members of the task force that found her were amazed at how everything went down. As for what happened to the teen and her abductor, she went home immediately and saw her family again. The abductor was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison in April.
Not the story you were expecting to hear today, right? But that’s fine, as the Nintendo Switch has always been a device that has surprised people, and this is simply another piece of its legend.
