An American judge has thrown a legal case out of court regarding the infamous Joy-Con drift as the judge stated that the complainants themselves have already agreed to Nintendo’s end user license agreement, which you accept when you set up your Nintendo Switch system, which states that the company “disallows lawsuits.” The infamous Joy-Con drift, which has surround the Nintendo Switch system since launch in 2017, has been a known issue for a long while. Nintendo of America’s president Doug Bowser admitted back in 2022 that it is a real issue and Nintendo of America allows Switch owners to send their faulty Joy-Cons in for repair free of charge. UK consumer watchdog Which? recently published a report which concluded that Joy-Con drift is certainly a fault and that Nintendo need to act urgently to fix the issue.
US: Judge dismisses Switch Joy-Con drift lawsuit says users agreed to Nintendo’s End User License Agreement
My Joy cons broke recently after having them for 6 years, my right joy con got so messed up, it now sends out tiny shock waves, almost paralysing my hand and arm. I now have brand new joy cons, and the old ones are locked up, never to be used again.
They knew it was an issue from day 1 and OFFER to fix effected units for FREE???
Always got be someone, in this case, someones, trying to take advantage of a situation.
I am GLAD the complainants lost.
By the same logic, Nintendo KNEW it was an issue from day one and they still released the product, and didn’t disclose what they knew, so they could profit from their defective product.
I knew that there would be a day that my joy cons would have that issue after starting to use my switch. I also knew that depending on how much I used the switch, the drift would start, which was about a year. Which isn’t bad since I was using the switch on a daily, sometimes hours a day.
*Free if you live in the US. Just curious, how much did Nintendo pay you to write this? This is so unashamedly anti-consumer it hurts.
When you buy electronics that has items like this and use it, it is expected to have a shelf life, the more you use them, the quicker they “break”. That is to be expected.
I mean, every single joycon I’ve purchased has developed that issue, despite all the care. I’ve resorted to buying non-official ones since they don’t have the problem
Mine got fixed and started drifting again less than a week after they were returned. After being fo e for a month. There is a reasonable expectation to have a product work as advertised.
If you want to solve drift from the Joy Cons easily (and other controllers that DO drift besides the Joy Cons and the Pro Controller), follow SEGA’s example with the Dreamcast controller and use hall effect sensors for them. Gulikit does sell individual modules for the Joy Cons with hall effect sensors and magnets, and they tend to be better than the carbon film and potentiometer modules.
How is saying you “disallow lawsuits” protected by the court system? Crazy to think I grew up when Nintendium was a thing and now they’re selling one of the most defective items on the market. Setting up local multiplayer is a nightmare because chances are high one of the controllers will be drifting for one of my friends, and we don’t really have the time to wait for the rubbing alcohol trick to work.
It’s humiliated that all of this is happening. I really can’t think enough to see that it’s going to happen again in there next machine.
It’s outrageous that Nintendo can “disallow lawsuits” by burying it within the text of a user agreement. Goodness knows what rights we’re signing away by agreeing to about 100 of these a year without reading (because who reasonably has the time).
I was under the impression that those sorts of agreements aren’t legally binding and can only be used in this way if it can be proven that the user actually read them. But clearly whatever the corpos say goes in the US legal system.
You are misinformed, they are legally binding. It just comes down to the content of the agreement, how it is worded and what kinds of things it tries to bind you into. The instances where user agreements were ruled upon were typically due to other reasons other than the fact it was a user agreement, such as trying to overrule “laws of the land”, which are typically are of a higher jurisdiction than the user agreement making it null.
In this case, we can call this a bad ruling, since this is a hardware issue, to which the user agreement would have to be available on the box prior to purchase. A shrink-wrap agreement (one which can only be viewed after purchase and therefore cannot be agreed to until after such a time) is highly debated in the legal world as to how valid they remain on such issues. So while I may see it as a bad ruling, many other legal professionals do not.
What is not contested though, is that they are not legally binding. Only badly written ones, and outliers fail on merit.
WOOOOW, That is so screwed up
Disallowed lawsuits. Are you serious? It’s crazy that they really didn’t look deeper enough too see why this is happening in the first place. Playing with my friends in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate while the drifting is occurring is really humiliating. We all know Nintendo won’t solve this issue and I believe this is going to happen again in there next machine if it continues.
I’m in the US. I better get my joycons in for their free repairs before Nintendo drops the program. D:
Whoa, is america like that? Where i’m from a country where the customer protection laws are very strong so this is very surprising. I know that because there was a case here of a League of Legends player that got banned for toxicity and won the case forcing Riot to give him back everything he had on a new profile so even with ToS they can’t just do whatever they want.
Also i know some people defend because of the free joy con repair but i don’t believe is available worldwide.
No, they’re not actually like this. It’s just a horrible judge. Most EULAs (despite the above statement) are actual not legally binding. The Eula has to be understood by both parties (which it normally isn’t) and reasonable (which it normally isn’t). Additionally, almost every time this happens, the company loses because Eula is deemed unenforceable (an example was a company that sold a device saying people could not install their own software kernel on it and trying to sue consumers. The court said the Eula was nonsense because it both couldn’t be understood in certain details, and because the person owned the device). In this case, it shouldn’t have been dismissed because the Eula can’t deny a company all forms of liability just because it says so, especially for a universal design flaw
So if I hypothetically bought a new Switch (without ever having used or owned one before), took the Joy-Con off, used them exclusively on someone else’s Switch, then they experience drift, I could have a valid case against Nintendo because I never personally agreed to their end user agreement? Or do I technically agree to it anyway just by using their devices?
Hypothetically, you can use it for a PC, and not for a Switch at all. I’m not sure why anyone would want to use joy-cons over other controllers, but you wouldn’t be agreeing to the terms of service in that case. This just further adds to the stupidity of the judge’s verdict.
Well, honestly yes because there are things that people didn’t agree too because in every console before you start playing it, you have to agree with the user agreement every time you begin playing a new hardware like PlayStation, Nintendo or Xbox. Once you agree on something on any hardware, you can’t turn back.
Don’t buy Nintendo. If you want the games, play them on different hardware.
Woke judges, corruption everywhere. Keep voting demoncrat.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Literally how in the honest-to-god hell do you get “liberalism” and “woke judges” out of this.
This was not caused by “the dumbocrats”.
This was allowed to happen because wealthy corporations (NO MATTER THEIR POLITICAL ALIGNMENT) can freely pay off the justice system underneath the table to get away with predatory anti-consumer business practices, if they have enough money.
An American judge does not have to be “woke” to be corrupt.
Judge clearly is not woke at all. Corruption comes from Repukeicans. I’ll always vote Democrat to protect my country from Repugnicans. Conservatism is a mental illness.
Hate to break it to you, but all the parties are corrupt.
You think? They just nothing but slackers because they didn’t even look deeper hard enough with this issue and the whole parties know this is a huge issue.
I think slacking is the least of our worries when it comes to them, but I can’t be bothered to care much because I am so tired of people picking one side and demonizing the other side and not admitting to their own dogma. It’s real rich when I talk about it and both the left and right label me with hateful things they’d give to the opposing side because I don’t affiliate myself with them, and they wonder why I can’t take what they say seriously. It’s like they’re brainwashed.
Speaking as someone politically on the right, this has nothing to do with wokeism and everything to do with the fact that our legal system has been twisted to favor establishment types and corporations with the deepest pockets. Like Gambit said, that can come from both sides.
I can agree to that statement. The fact remains that the legal system is just being too stubborn to realize that this whole issue won’t go away. We all know this issue is still gonna make things a lot worse for the console market if it continues. I mean seriously, Disallowed lawsuits? They want people to let this go and drop these lawsuits.
Funny it was a conservative judge that made the ruling….
Misuse of the word woke…. As usual….
Its communism pure and simple. The corporation is protected from you the filthy consumer. Communism = woke. Woke = demoncrat.
Let this be the redpill that wakes you up. Its only going to get worse if u keep letting it.
We need law and order.
Join the majority. Look to Twitter and see. We are everywhere and we are taking back the world from the woke. From the corrupt.
I hope you’re aware that the equations “communism = woke” and “woke = democrat” also means that “democrat = communism”. And if you honestly believe that democrats are communists, then you have no clue what communism even means.
I can’t tell if this is just bait or legitimately someone’s raving lunatic uncle trying to turn a video game article into his own sermon
The problem is all of the Big 3 have this problem. it’s intentional because they’re cheap and greedy.
Is Nazis a better description 4 u? Democrats are the true Nazis. Democrats R a virus. The cure is incoming. Watch the news.
Know what else Democrats are? They’re fucking Americans. Piss off my
Alright grandpa, take your schizo meds.
Use magnets