Nintendo is certainly no stranger to legal wrangling over Joy-Con drift. We saw the first class-action lawsuit over the issue filed back in 2019, and now the Canadian law firm Lambert Avocat Inc. has submitted another one. The lawsuit seeks restitution for anybody who’s bought a Nintendo Switch, Switch Lite, Joy-Con, or Pro Controller in the province of Quebec.
For those unfamiliar, Joy-Con drift mostly frequently affects the left Joy-Con’s analog stick, and seems to eventually happen to most, if not all, of the itty-bitty detachable controllers with enough use (I’ve had two Joy-Cons fall victim to drift myself). Lambert Avocat provided the following justifications for the lawsuit:
- The consumers wouldn’t have brought the defective gaming systems or controllers or wouldn’t have paid such high price, had they known their reduced product lifespan because of the defect.
- The defect prevents the products in performing a function for which they were bought for and causes inconvenience to consumers
- The defect was not revealed by Nintendo.
- The consumers were not able to detect the default through an ordinary examination of the products.
The class action is currently awaiting authorization from a Superior Court of Quebec judge to proceed. In the meantime, Lambert Avocat are collecting information about Joy-Con drift via an online questionnaire.
Last year Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa apologized for the Joy-Con drift issue, but it doesn’t seem like the company has done anything to resolve the problem since then. Nintendo will repair defective Joy-Cons free of charge and they recently began selling individual Joy-Cons, making replacements less expensive, but let’s be honest, those are just Band-Aids. You have to wonder how many lawsuits need to be filed before this actually gets fixed.
What has been your experience with Joy-Con drift? Has it been enough to sour you on the Switch experience to some degree?
