As details surrounding the doomed OceanGate submarine expedition continued to emerge this week, a few key facts stood out, with a major one being the fact that the submersible relied upon a wireless Logitech F710 gamepad for steering.


In an interview with CBS last summer, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was on the fatal expedition and is now deceased, could be seen holding up an F710 and telling presenter David Pogue, “We run the whole thing with this game controller.”


@bbcnews In 2022, the BBC filmed inside the OceanGate Titanic submersible that has gone missing during a dive to see the wreck. #Titanic #Submersible #Submarine #TitanicWreck #TouristSub #AtlanticOcean #BBCNews ♬ original sound - BBC News


As The Verge notes, this isn’t unheard of — the U.S. Navy uses gamepads to control submarine periscopes, for example, and Elon Musk’s Boring Company has released footage of workers using an Xbox One controller to steer a drilling machine.


Unfortunately, considering the precarious and ultimately lethal nature of this particular journey, many people zeroed in on the use of the F710 as proof of OceanGate’s lack of preparation and lack of commitment to safety standards and basic engineering principles. (James Cameron has also criticized the decision to use carbon fiber composites in the construction of the submersible, which he explained has “no strength in compression.”)


While all this was going on, one Twitter user thought to check Logitech’s stock price and found that the “present value of future cash flows of Logitech declined by $1B+ in a single day” because of the company’s association with the disaster.



As many on Twitter pointed out, however, the company’s stock price initially declined back on June 14th, prior to the OceanGate tragedy. Instead, it was in response to Logitech’s CEO announcing his decision to step down from the role to pursue other opportunities. Following the announcement, shares were dropped by 8.6 percent, staying low until a further, but much smaller, decline of 3.6 percent on June 21st, which MarketWatch suggested was a response to the OceanGate revelation.


That said, Logitech’s stock is already slowly climbing back up, suggesting that, unlike the doomed souls on board the Titan, Logitech will emerge from this disaster relatively unscathed.