Nintendo faces lawsuit over ‘drifting’ Switch Joy-Cons
Plaintiff alleges Nintendo was aware of controller flaw
A class action lawsuit has been filed over ‘drifting’ Nintendo Switch Joy-Con Controllers.
Customers experiencing problems after their one-year warranty expires are paying to repair a known fault, the suit alleges.
‘Drifting’ Joy-Con controllers have been experienced by a number of Nintendo Switch owners, the suit continues, which is when controller movements are registered even when the analogue sticks are left untouched.
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The lawsuit was filed by plaintiff Ryan Diaz on July 19 in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle.
Diaz says he sent a faulty Joy-Con to Nintendo for repair under the one-year warranty, only to experience drifting again a few months later, at which point he had to pay for a repair and decided to purchase two additional controllers for $90.
Diaz alleges that Nintendo is fully aware of the drifting defect after numerous online complaints received from its customers and yet continues to fail to “disclose the defect and routinely refuses to repair the joysticks without charge.”
The suit claims that Diaz’s experiences are “by no means isolated” and that “the internet is replete with examples of message boards and other websites where consumers have complained of the exact same Joy-Con defect.”
However, one attorney told GameDaily.biz that he believes the drifting issue has been exaggerated.
“I think social media has amplified this to be larger than it actually is,” Brandon J Huffman, attorney with Odin Law and Media told the publication.
“If 100 people total had this problem, and all posted about it and posted video, it does not mean, necessarily, that they are representative of millions more with the same issue. Time will tell if that hypothesis is correct.
“Whether this lawsuit will succeed is a crapshoot at this point… For Nintendo, the best case is it gets dismissed or the class does not get certified for some reason. Worst case is that Nintendo faces millions in damages and millions more in attorneys fees, but I think that is pretty unlikely.”
