Nintendo Faces Another Class-Action Lawsuit Over Joy-Con Drift in Canada

Nathan Birch
Nintendo Joy-Con

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:

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  • 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?

Nathan Birch Photo

About the author: Professional writer of trivial things. Nathan has been covering games, entertainment, and online culture for over a decade with bylines at IGN, GameSpy, Cracked, Uproxx, ComicBook, and more. Joined Wccftech gaming team in 2017, and has written hundreds of game reviews and thousands of news stories since.

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