Dbrand is sending improved Switch 2 grips to all customers after ‘spectacularly terrible response’ to detaching claims

Peripheral manufacturer Dbrand has provided customers with an update on its ongoing Switch 2 Killswitch saga, conceding that its initial response was “spectacularly terrible”.

Earlier this week the company responded to users who were claiming that its Killswitch case for the Switch 2 makes it much easier to accidentally detach the Joy-Cons.

After initially explaining that the reason for this was because its Joy-Con grips fill a gap deliberately created by Nintendo to make detaching the Joy-Cons harder, Dbrand then took to Reddit to state that “nobody routinely holds their Switch 2 like this,” and suggested that some players were “actively trying to” make it happen.

Specifically, the issue seems to happen when players hold the Switch 2 by the Joy-Cons without supporting the main console from behind with their fingers, if they hold it by a single Joy-Con, and if they hold it parallel to the ground (i.e. flat down).

The lengthy statement got a mixed response, with some customers claiming that users with smaller hands do hold the console by the Joy-Cons alone, and others arguing that it was reminiscent of the iPhone 4 situation, when users complained that antenna reception dropped drastically when held a certain way, and Steve Jobs’ response to a customer was reportedly “just avoid holding it that way”.

Now, in a new post on the Dbrand Reddit page, the company has pledged “we’re fixing it” and told customers that its previous statement was unacceptable.

“After reading through your feedback, it’s quite clear that our post was a spectacularly terrible response to the issue at hand,” it wrote. “Some of you have expressed that opinion in a perfectly reasonable way. Others have expressed it with literal death threats.

“We’re not clear on how this went from ‘a problem we need to address’ to ‘this is the worst company to ever exist’, but we acknowledge that every complaint we’ve received is underpinned by a problem that we alone are responsible for solving.

“As easy as it is to boil our original post down to ‘you’re holding it wrong,’ what we’re sober to now is the point that you should be allowed to hold it however the fuck you want, without detachment occurring. We get it. Please continue dunking on us for the next six to eight months for reincarnating Steve Jobs.”

The company has now pledged that “everyone, whether or not you’re experiencing this issue, is getting a free replacement set of Joy-Con Grips”, and that it’s working on two new versions of the grips.

The first is similar to the existing grip but has a thinner lip, which should provide “a significant improvement”, while the second is an entirely new design “that fully resolves the detachment issue”.

“Why are we even entertaining Solution 1?” the company explained. “The problem is that we don’t know if Solution 2 is actually feasible to mass-produce. There’s a very real possibility that the first unit we try to make gets stuck on the tool and turns it into the world’s most expensive paperweight.

“We’re beyond the limit of mass production feasibility with this design – it’s the very reason we didn’t go this route in the first place. Nevertheless, the current level of fervor around this detachment debacle has prompted us to give it a shot. If it works, it will be the holy grail of Joy-Con case attachment solutions. If it doesn’t work, we throw away one of our mass production tools and Solution 1 remains as a perfectly viable and markedly improved solution for everyone.”

The company will be providing users with the next update on the situation on July 10, after it attempts a “mass production trial” of the new design (“Solution 2”).

Dbrand said it would not be able to “hold back” orders until one of the two solutions has been decided on, because it’s “not possible to manage at scale, and is only going to push our customer support backlog further into an insurmountable state”.

“What we are 100% committed to,” it added, “is getting everyone replacement Joy-Cons ASAP, regardless of whether they’re severely affected, haven’t experienced the issue, have emailed us a dozen times, or have no clue about any of this.”