Have you experienced Joy-Con drift when playing games on your Nintendo Switch? It turns out that you aren’t the only one, as, after investigating how widespread the issue has become, a class-action lawsuit has been filed against Nintendo of America.
It is the class action law firm Chimicles Schwartz Kriner and Donaldson-Smith that has filed the complaint with the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.
That complaint can be read online, and alleges that the Left Stick on the Joy-Con controllers are defective.
This result in the user experiencing drift issues that “automatically register movement when the joystick is not being controlled by the user,” interfering with gameplay.
The law firm is acting on behalf of those that have purchased a Nintendo Switch and/or additional Joy-Con controllers, in that the issue has resulted in claims that have been made “under various consumer protection statutes as well as various warranty and common law claims.”
There is one main example that is covered in the complaint, which relates to California-based citizen Ryan Diaz.
It discusses how he bought a Nintendo Switch console with additional Joy-Con controllers on 21st July 2017, and, after 11 months of use, found that the left Joy-Con started “registering movement without being manually controlled” rendering it unusable.
Even after the defective Joy-Con controller was sent for repair under warranty, the same issue returned three months later. Beyond that, his additional Joy-Con started to suffer from the same issue but was outside of the warranty period.
He claimed that he “did not know about the defect,” and if he had known about it “he would not have purchased his Switch or would have paid substantially less for it.”
