Update: Nintendo Facing Class-Action Lawsuit Over Joy-Con Drift, Issues Response to Customer Complaints
Posted on July 22 2019 by Charles Xavier
Update: Nintendo has issued a statement regarding reports of Joy-Con drifting:
“We take great pride in creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them. We are aware of recent reports that some Joy-Con controllers are not responding correctly. We want our consumers to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we always encourage them to visit http://support.nintendo.com so we can help”.
Though the statement is not a direct response to the recently filed lawsuit, it’s hard not to see this action by Nintendo as compelled by the threat of litigation.
Original: The Nintendo Switch has been highly successful for Nintendo since its debut in 2017, and it’s hard to imagine the steam of that success coming to a halt anytime soon. However, if a recent class-action lawsuit filed against Nintendo has any merit, they may be facing some serious issues in the near future. The lawsuit filed by plaintiff Rian Diaz yesterday in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle claims that many Nintendo Switch owners are experiencing “Joy-Con drift”. Basically, the analog sticks are untouched yet they are still registering movement, and if the drifting is bad enough the Joy-Con may become useless.
Diaz said he had this problem while his Switch was still under its one-year warranty, so he sent the problematic Joy-Con to get repaired only to experience the drifting issue again months later. His one-year warranty was expired by then, so rather than paying out of pocket for repairs, he purchased two additional left and right Joy-Cons.
Diaz and the class represented by the suit are alleging Nintendo knows about the drifting issue and even knew way back during pre-release testing. Furthermore, he claims they are also aware of the issue from numerous online complaints by customers, but they continuously disregard the issue and have failed to disclose the defect to consumers. The suit asserts that Diaz’s drifting issue is not isolated and that Switch owners have “suffered an ascertainable loss of money and/or property and/or value.”
Nintendo is being accused of “violations of California consumer fraud statutes, negligent misrepresentation, breach of implied warranty, unjust enrichment, and…violations of the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and California’s Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act.” The class is pursuing “monetary relief for damages suffered, declaratory relief as to the parties’ rights under Defendant’s warranty, and public injunctive relief.”
I’ve been aware of Joy-Con drifting for a while, and I have friends who have experienced it. To my knowledge the drifting isn’t a factory defect, it’s caused by dirt or other particles getting lodged in the components of the analog stick. So if it isn’t a factory defect, and if it cannot be proven Nintendo did indeed have knowledge of the faulty hardware prior to release, this lawsuit may only be frivolous.
Have you experienced Joy-Con drifting? What’s your opinion on the potential lawsuit? We’re interested to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Scribd (via Yahoo Finance), The Verge (via My Nintendo News)
Charles is a Senior Editor at Zelda Dungeon. He is a Visual Development artist focused on enviroments and pitch paintings. Check out his Instagram and Twitter to see his latest artworks, a lot of which is Zelda fan art! His favorite candy is Skittles – he feels the world should know this.
