A proposed class action lawsuit against Nintendo of America, filed on behalf of all Switch owners in the U.S. below the age of 18, aims to force the console maker to address an alleged flaw in the Nintendo Switch’s signature Joy-Con controllers.
Among fans of the Switch, this problem is known as “drift.” Joy-Cons can quickly wear out in a specific way over the course of ordinary use. An affected Joy-Con’s control stick might constantly pull in a particular direction, even when the stick is in a neutral position, causing problems such as missed inputs or the camera moving on its own. This can make some games virtually unplayable.
This has been cited as an issue in some Joy-Cons with every model of the Switch for at least three years, including the portable-only Switch Lite that Nintendo released in 2019. Some users have successfully fixed the issue by disassembling and cleaning their Joy-Cons, as dust had simply gotten inside them, but others have reported finding significant and unusual amounts of internal wear inside the unit.
After months of consumer outcry, as well as several high-profile pieces on the subject in gaming media, Nintendo implemented a new policy last summer to deal with the issue. It will now repair or replace affected Joy-Cons free of charge, even if they’re no longer under warranty, and has a specific form for the purpose on its support website.
That wasn’t enough for at least one fan, however. “A.C.,” a minor, filed the lawsuit in King County Superior Court in Seattle against Nintendo on Nov. 17 through his guardian. (A.C. is referred to with male pronouns in the complaint.) The class action seeks to represent “all persons in the United States who bought a Nintendo Switch… and, at the time of purchase, were below the age of majority.” It charges Nintendo with continuing to make and market new Switch units that suffer from the defect that causes drifting. It demands a jury trial on the subject.
The suit seeks damages “in an amount to be determined at trial,” in addition to court costs, a reimbursement to A.C. in the form of buyback of his affected hardware, a full product recall or large-scale replacement program from Nintendo, and an order that prevents Nintendo from continuing to market and sell the Switch as it does for as long as the defects continue to appear.
A.C., a resident of California, claims in his lawsuit to have first bought a Switch on Amazon with his own money in March of 2017. A.C. reports that over the course of three years of regular play on his Switch, each of his Joy-Con controllers, whether they were brand-new or repaired by Nintendo, routinely began to drift after about three months of regular use, whether they were new, used, or freshly repaired by Nintendo. As per A.C.’s account, “his preferred games require precise gameplay, [so] the drift issue has prevented him from playing these games successfully.” (In other words, A.C. probably plays a lot of Smash Bros. Ultimate.)
The lawsuit features a number of photos that document the internal structure of a Joy-Con. As per an unnamed “technical expert” that the plaintiffs have consulted on the subject, drifting is caused by “extensive wear on the pad surface on the interior of the Joy-Con. As the steel brushes inside of the joystick move back and forth, they rub away the soft carbon material that makes up the pad, which changes its electrical resistance and leads to the drifting phenomenon. The difference in surface hardness between the steel brush and the carbon pad results in excessive wear debris that collects on the steel brush tips. This transferred debris exacerbates the wear of the pad.”
It also documents a sampling of posts from social media, message boards, the official Nintendo support forums, and media sources that deal with other cases of Joy-Con drift over the last three years, noting that Nintendo of Japan’s president Shuntaro Furukawa has offered a public apology for the issue as recently as June of 2020.
This is at least the second lawsuit filed against Nintendo over the Joy-Con drift issue, following a similar class-action complaint, Diaz vs. Nintendo of America, Inc., in July of 2019. The Diaz suit, which names 18 different plaintiffs from 17 states including Washington and Oregon, is currently in arbitration.
A.C.’s suit charges Nintendo with knowingly and intentionally concealing material facts about the Switch by failing to disclose the defect that causes Joy-Con drift to interested consumers. “Nintendo acted in an unethical, unscrupulous, outrageous, oppressive, and substantially injurious manner,” the suit continues, by promoting and selling Joy-Cons and Switch Lites that contained the drifting defect.
The Joy-Con drift issue has been strange for a long time, as Nintendo has historically been famous throughout the games industry for its products not breaking like this. Some of them have certainly been flawed at a design level—you’d be better off staring directly into the sun than playing a Virtual Boy for any length of time—but there’s a decades-old running joke that Nintendo’s consoles are made out of the mythical, unbreakable substance “Nintendium.”
We’ve contacted a Nintendo of America representative for comment. Here’s a copy of the full complaint.
