Nintendo of Europe has agreed to pay a €35 million fine (around $40 million) after a French regulator claimed the company misled customers about Joy-Con drift defects on the original Nintendo Switch controllers.
The news was reported by Le Monde yesterday (thanks, GamesIndustry.Biz), sharing details about the culmination of an investigation by France’s General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs, and Fraud Control (DGCCRF).
The investigation found that Nintendo was aware of technical defects, which included responsiveness issues and drift, as early as 2018. Yet, the company did not inform consumers until 2020, two years later.
The DGCCRF said this led to consumers buying unnecessary replacement controllers. The National Investigation Service (SNE) of the DGCCRF determined that Nintendo of Europe misled consumers by failing to disclose Joy-Con controller defects transparently.
Nintendo of Europe said in a statement that it did not “intentionally mislead consumers.” Moreover, the company stated that agreeing to the settlement “does not constitute an admission of guilt and reflects only the amicable resolution of legal proceedings.”
Related:Union workers establish hardship fund to support devs impacted by layoffs
The investigation originally began after a 2020 complaint from the French consumer association UFC-Que Choisir, the same group that has sued the likes of Ubisoft and Valve over the years.
When the complaints from European consumer right groups first started, the aim was to open a dialogue with Nintendo that would encourage the company to address the drift issue. They weren’t the only ones. A mere year before, a class-action lawsuit in the United States collected multiple testimonies from Switch owners that had ran into trouble with their Joy-Cons, including one individual that said he encountered the issue with both new and freshly repaired controllers. That lawsuit was dismissed in 2024.
About the Author
Contributing Editor, News, GameDeveloper.com
Diego Nicolás Argüello is a freelance journalist and critic from Argentina. Video games helped him to learn English, so now he covers them for places like The New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, and more. He also runs Into the Spine, a site dedicated to fostering and supporting new writers, and co-hosted Turnabout Breakdown, a podcast about the Ace Attorney series. He’s most likely playing a rhythm game as you read this.
Diego Argüello
Read More