Amidst all the negative press that the gaming industry tends to garner there are wondrous rays of hope that shine through. In this week’s ‘D’aww, that makes me feel good’ moment we have a PlayStation employee who went out of his way to help a gamer from New Jersey who is suffering from Cerebral Palsy. Ajmal Alex Nawabi went out of his way to design and produce a custom DualShock 4 controller and it went a little something like this.
Peter Byrne put an email into PlayStation support a few weeks back. He explained to them the issues he had with the DualShock 4 due to his condition. Included in the email was a picture that detailed what his left hand looked like when he tried to grip the controller. Support provided Byrne with an email address and this is how he made contact with Nawabi.
Emails were exchanged back and forth with the final outcome being an unfortunate statement of ‘we’re unable to do anything to help you at this time’. Not wanting to look uncaring, Nawabi let Byrne know that a very special PlayStation goodie bag was on its way to say sorry. Little did Byrne know, that extra special DualShock 4 was in there but Nawabi didn’t want to spoil the surprise.
Byrne went into great detail of the situation on his Facebook account:
I figure I share this story with everyone because it is too good not to share! When I use the PlayStation 4 controller my game constantly pauses because my left hand hits the touchpad which is frustrating for me. Around two weeks ago, I decided to message PlayStation support and they gave this email address and said tell them my issue and wait for a response. A man by the name of Alex Nawabi from PlayStation messaged me and told me he was taking my matter personally and not on behalf of PlayStation. I explained to him my problem with a controller as well as my condition of cerebral palsy. I even had to give him a visual of what my left hand looked like gripping the controller. After a series of back and forth emails. Mr. Nawabi told me he was ordering some parts to come up with a solution for me. He emailed he last week saying that he tried to come up with a solution but it didn’t work. However, he would send me a PlayStation goodie box anyway. I received that box today and inside was the modified controller especially made for me and this letter. I honestly got choked up reading the letter as I did not expect anything like this to happen. Mr. Nawabi really cared about my situation and did this on his own time to make my experience better. I honestly can’t thank him enough for everything he did for me.
Check out the controller:
Included with the controller was a note from Nawabi detailing how he’d modified the controller… and an apology for tricking the young gamer! Not only that he detailed the incredible amount of work he went to and asked for feedback so he could build Byrne a second backup controller should this one break.
Of course something like this doesn’t take too long to hit the media (like us!) and praise upon praise upon praise came Nawabi’s way. On his own Facebook account, the humble PlayStation employee expressed his own thanks.
Thank you all for the kind words. I’m eternally grateful.
Seeing how happy he is, and how stoked his mom got, has me in tears.
Please keep in mind that the Research and Development team at PlayStation is filled with some absolutely astounding individuals who wake up every day and try to come up with a solution for everyone. What I did only works for a single individual and it should not undermine their work in any way. I cannot stress this enough. Without them, we wouldn’t even be close to what we are today. If you’re not aware, they’ve recently added more accessibility settings that let you remap buttons to help with a large portion of needs. Their team members are the true MVPs.
I’ve always cared, I always will care.
What a way to sign off on that post Mr. Nawabi! The world can use a few more people with the attitude of ‘I’ve always cared, I always will care’. An inspirational story to start your Sunday!