Over the past four years, Nintendo of America has been in a lawsuit over issues with their Nintendo Switch’s joy-con drift. According to NintendoLife, the lawsuit, titled Sanchez et. al V. Nintendo of America, claimed that Nintendo willingly sold their clients broken product. Joy-con drift has been an issue that has hindered the product since the Switch came out in 2017. After a varying amount of time, people would experience the analog sticks of their joy-cons picking up inputs to move in various directions without the control of its wielder, hindering Switch owner’s movement and their games’ playability. Fudzilla notes that Nintendo knows about the joy-con issues, and has offered a free resolution to fix Joy-Con drift for those who still have the issue, however, the parents involved in the lawsuit did not believe that was enough. The lawsuit started in 2019 and was first officially filed in October of 2020, with Sanchez et. al. initially suing Nintendo of America for $5 million.
In November of 2022, the verdict came out in Nintendo’s favor due to their Switch’s End User Licensing Agreement, which did not allow lawsuits, requiring both parties to undergo legal arbitration (which would have a mutually agreed upon third party make the final decision, forgoing the need to go to court) if it came to that. What this meant was, according to MyNintendoNews, the case itself was dismissed due to the EULA explicitly mentioning that Nintendo could not be sued.
However, over the last few months, the parents in the attempted lawsuit have tried to use a loophole in the EULA to reignite the lawsuit. They claim that because their children are the owners of the switches, they are not able to be legally bound by the EULA. This appeal is what has been recently overturned by the court, due to the court defining that the parents were the actual owners of the Nintendo Switch, making the loophole invalid.
Although the joy-con drift has been a constant source of complaint for many users, according to Nintendo themselves, with the Nintendo Switch surpassing 100 million units sold as of September of last year and usage on the rise, it seems as though this lawsuit has only been a small ripple in the pond of their current and future escapades.