Nintendo of Europe has accepted a € 35 million euro fine over Joy-Con drift.
The Switch launched in Europe in 2017, but Joy-Con drift was not widely known until 2019. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa formally apologized for the issue in their June 2020 financial meeting.
France’s DGCCRF (General Directorate for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control) investigated Nintendo of Europe, but not over whether Nintendo knowingly sold a defective product.
Instead, they charged Nintendo of not properly informing their French and European consumers from 2018 to 2023.
In a press release, the DGCCRF revealed that Nintendo of Europe has agreed to pay the € 35 million fine. They will also honor all repair requests past the warranty period, after earlier pledging to make all such repairs free.
Joy-Con drift has turned out to be a costly issue for Nintendo, but so far, we haven’t seen similar complaints for the Switch 2 Joy-Cons and their smooth-gliding sticks. Hopefully, Nintendo’s engineers and production partners really have resolved the issue for good.
