Man built a deep-sea sub with a $30 game controller. It didn’t end well 3,500 metres below the Atlantic for the 4 paying passengers inside

In a 2022 CBS Sunday Morning segment, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush showed journalist David Pogue a Logitech F710 game controller. Rush said, “We run the whole thing with this game controller.” The wireless controller had 3D-printed thumbstick extensions and served as the primary way to steer the Titan submersible.

Pogue laughed and said, “Come on!” while covering his eyes with his hand. The Titan was built to carry paying passengers to the Titanic wreck site. Rush presented the inexpensive controller as a practical choice because many engineers and pilots already knew how to use two-stick game pads.

According to Ars Technica, the Titan imploded in June 2023 during a dive to the Titanic site. All five people on board died, including Rush and four paying passengers. The estate of Paul-Henri Louis Emile Nargeolet filed the first Titan wrongful death lawsuit against OceanGate, Rush’s estate, and companies that helped build the vessel. The complaint seeks at least $50 million in damages.

Lawsuit cites wireless game controller and carbon fiber construction

The complaint describes Nargeolet as known worldwide as “Mr. Titanic.” It states he had completed 37 dives to the wreck and was serving as a Titan crewmember on the final trip to guide others and help with navigation.

The lawsuit repeats several long-standing criticisms of the Titan. It notes the sub was not built from titanium, the material used in most submersibles, because it grows stronger under compression.

Instead, the hull used carbon fiber, which the complaint says can crack under repeated compression. The Titan’s unconventional materials choice highlights the risks of DIY engineering, a theme seen in other ambitious projects, like a YouTuber who attempted to build a $2.5 million McLaren P1 from scratch.

Rush once told Pogue, “At some point, safety just is pure waste.” The complaint says Rush viewed himself as an innovator like “Steve Jobs or Elon Musk” and believed he had found a lighter way to build submersibles.

The filing singles out Titan’s “hip, contemporary, wireless electronics systems.” It states the vessel was piloted with a mass-produced Logitech video game controller normally used with a PlayStation or Xbox, rather than a controller made specifically for the sub. The controller worked by Bluetooth instead of a hardwired connection.

The complaint adds that Titan had only “one button” for power inside the main chamber. The rest of the controls for lights and ballast, plus gauges for depth and oxygen, were on a touchscreen. Rush stated that Titan was “to other submersibles what the iPhone was to the BlackBerry.”

The lawsuit notes that none of those systems would work without a constant power source and a wireless signal. Concerns about the submersible’s single power source and wireless dependency are also seen when a New York home inspector uncovered numerous issues in a $2.5 million property.

OceanGate’s earlier submersible, Cyclops I, had also used a Sony DualShock 3 game controller and other wireless technology. An expert quoted in the complaint said such systems created “multiple points of failure” and that “‘every sub in the world has hardwired controls for a reason,’ namely that a loss of signal would not imperil the vessel.” The filing says those concerns were disregarded because Titan used nearly identical systems.

The complaint also criticizes the engineering team that designed and installed the electronics. It states the group was made up mostly of current or recent Washington State University graduates who had “virtually no real-world experience and no prior exposure to the deep-sea diving industry.”

The lawsuit does not claim that the Logitech controller, the carbon fiber hull, the porthole, or the mix of materials with different expansion rates each caused the implosion on its own. It suggests those systems could have formed a “daisy chain of failures of multiple improperly designed or constructed parts or systems.”

A final government report on the incident has been in process for more than a year and has not been released. After the implosion, social media users circulated a photo that purportedly showed the game controller sitting intact on the seafloor. An Associated Press fact check in 2023 said the image was fake.