American judge dismisses Switch Joy-Con drift lawsuit
American judge dismisses Switch Joy-Con drift lawsuit
by IHateMyselfButNotYou
28 Comments
razorbeamz
This always was a poorly thought out lawsuit.
eightbitagent
To win a lawsuit you have to prove damages. Nintendo will repair them for free, therefore you have no damages.
Bariq-99
L
Martholomeow
While i think it’s pretty ridiculous that the reason the suit was dismissed is due to the EULA, which no one ever reads or takes seriously. It’s also kinda ridiculous that they tried to sue anyway. The product comes with a warranty, and Nintendo offers to fix the problem for free even after the warranty expires.
So what were they suing for? The psychological pain of watching Mario walk the wrong way off a platform?
JoeyBigtimes
Joystick drift happens on all consoles now. Get some hall effect joysticks. Next generation if there’s not hall effect sensors in all joysticks we riot.
Yerm_Terragon
TL;DR – Nintendo included a clause in the EULA for the Switch that disallows lawsuits. The team behind the lawsuit attempted to counter this clause by saying young children should not be held to this, but Nintendo struck them down with the defense that the parents would be the true owners of the device and held to the terms of the EULA
p-sychiatrist
We lost.
SteamedBeave89
Shifty life pro tip, if you can take em apart and swap the old with the new. That’s how one of my broke friends used to do Xbox one controllers.
RedditUser41970
“I bought this device for my kids, and *they* never agreed to an EULA” is an argument that quite honestly should result in the lawyers who pushed it being disbarred.
Independent of what anyone thinks about Nintendo’s response, that was just incompetence mixed with a fishing expedition by ambulance chasers.
CoconutHeadFaceMan
If anything, I’m disappointed that the suit was so incompetently planned and executed, because “major console manufacturer knowingly continues to sell defective hardware that will randomly result in consumers having to wait weeks for repairs” isn’t something that should be celebrated or rewarded. People rightfully tore Microsoft a new one over the XBox 360 RROD issue, it isn’t okay just because the wholesome 100 bing bing wahoo nostalgia company did it this time.
Odie_Odie
Unethical doesn’t mean liable. Unethical doesn’t mean illegal. Nintendo should have solved the joycon drift problem. They have cashed in on their reputation for designing hardy consoles and peripherals, onus is on them to earn that reputation back.
The American judiciary system doesn’t exist to punish companies for selling BAD products.
DSMidna
Children be like: “This Eula does not concern me because I cannot read.”
James-Avatar
But they do drift so what are we doing here?
atrielienz
Only one of many. This is basically just clickbait. Mostly because the case complaint is based on the children owning the consoles and thereby being allowed to sue. Judge dismissed it because the parents technically own the consoles (because apparently kids can’t own things), and as a result was dismissed. This isn’t really a win for Nintendo. There’s several pending lawsuits still ongoing.
oIovoIo
While I always eyerolled at a lot of the class action lawsuit stuff, credit where credit is due – had the issue not been raised and a stink made about it in the gaming press and more publicly with the threats of having to fend off lawsuits, I doubt Nintendo would have done anywhere near as much to update their internal policies and made it as easy to send in and repair or replace joycons with issues.
I remember getting joycon drift early on when the switch first launched before it was a more widely known problem, and no one really believed it was a thing back then and going through support was a fair bit harder than after it became widely known and Nintendo updated their support policies.
jhud666
I spend $9 on new joy sticks for the joycons. I replaced them myself. Haven’t had problems since. But since some people can’t do it. Send them back to Nintendo they do it for free.
foxershorts
This is a big L for consumers.
iloveshw
How is a statement in a license agreement that says “you can’t sue me” even legal? Even ignoring the fact that Switch is a publicly available physical product and a license agreement for it doesn’t make sense – for the software – maybe, for Nintendo services like the shop – maybe, but not for the physical product.
Many countries have lists of “abusive clauses”, which can’t be used in contracts and licenses and if they are used, they are considered null. On top of those lists are clauses that restrict responsibility of the seller/producer of sold services and products.
And here you aren’t even presented with the license or any agreement before you make a purchase of a defective Switch. Arguably you don’t even have to buy the Switch, since the same defect is present in JoyCons sold separately.
Snivilis
Several people are saying that they are getting away with it cause they are fixing them for free. Except when I first got my switch, year after it came out, I was in south Korea. With a month it started drifting. They forced me send the whole switch with the controllers to get repaired. Took them 2 months to send it back. Then a year later right after the warranty was over they started drifting again and this time they told me I had to pay to get them repaired. Maybe now they do it for free because of the amount of controllers that do this but in the beginning they said you have to pay to get it repaired if out of warranty. I just bought a second set and learned how to fix them myself.
MediumLong2
I really hope these government judges help consumers here. If you buy a video game controller, consumers deserve the right to feel confident that it’s not going to break any time soon. Getting it replaced or repaired by Nintendo is nicer than nothing, but it’s still a huge pain in the butt.
SynthGreen
I mean yeah. They don’t really sell them damaged and offer free repair, without saying that they work for lifetime.
It’s annoying and we all want them to make them better but I never expected this one to go far.
Linkin_G
Of course it’s the American one.
Ammonia13
Of course he did. Can’t hold big business accountable! s/
144tzer
The judge is obviously wrong here.
There is plenty of precedent. “If you buy this product, you agree not to sue us” hasn’t held up before when people bought defective products.
If you go to Disney World, sign a form that says you won’t sue them, and then your kid gets molested by Goofy and the chef put arsenic in your wife’s meal, it won’t matter that you signed a form saying you wouldn’t sue. It doesn’t make it any less legal to commit crimes. And on the topic of Nintendo, no, selling a defective product on the assumption that it will work is not legal.
lazyness92
And it comes down to EU laws to hold the fort again
Zero_fon_Fabre
Nintendo. Great games, absolute shit business and ethics.
But, hey, at least they’re sorry!… After years of denial. Sure, they fix drifting joycons, but, those fixes still only last slfor only so long.
If they’re actually sorry, they’d stop making broken controllers.
I fail to see how this was never an issue before the Switch, but suddenly, it’s a problem now. What happened to their quality control? What happened to their ability to make good controllers?
PepsiMax2004
Man, that sucks.
Username4me2usenow
But everytime Nintendo wants to sue someone they win… wtf
28 Comments
This always was a poorly thought out lawsuit.
To win a lawsuit you have to prove damages. Nintendo will repair them for free, therefore you have no damages.
L
While i think it’s pretty ridiculous that the reason the suit was dismissed is due to the EULA, which no one ever reads or takes seriously. It’s also kinda ridiculous that they tried to sue anyway. The product comes with a warranty, and Nintendo offers to fix the problem for free even after the warranty expires.
So what were they suing for? The psychological pain of watching Mario walk the wrong way off a platform?
Joystick drift happens on all consoles now. Get some hall effect joysticks. Next generation if there’s not hall effect sensors in all joysticks we riot.
TL;DR – Nintendo included a clause in the EULA for the Switch that disallows lawsuits. The team behind the lawsuit attempted to counter this clause by saying young children should not be held to this, but Nintendo struck them down with the defense that the parents would be the true owners of the device and held to the terms of the EULA
We lost.
Shifty life pro tip, if you can take em apart and swap the old with the new. That’s how one of my broke friends used to do Xbox one controllers.
“I bought this device for my kids, and *they* never agreed to an EULA” is an argument that quite honestly should result in the lawyers who pushed it being disbarred.
Independent of what anyone thinks about Nintendo’s response, that was just incompetence mixed with a fishing expedition by ambulance chasers.
If anything, I’m disappointed that the suit was so incompetently planned and executed, because “major console manufacturer knowingly continues to sell defective hardware that will randomly result in consumers having to wait weeks for repairs” isn’t something that should be celebrated or rewarded. People rightfully tore Microsoft a new one over the XBox 360 RROD issue, it isn’t okay just because the wholesome 100 bing bing wahoo nostalgia company did it this time.
Unethical doesn’t mean liable. Unethical doesn’t mean illegal. Nintendo should have solved the joycon drift problem. They have cashed in on their reputation for designing hardy consoles and peripherals, onus is on them to earn that reputation back.
The American judiciary system doesn’t exist to punish companies for selling BAD products.
Children be like: “This Eula does not concern me because I cannot read.”
But they do drift so what are we doing here?
Only one of many. This is basically just clickbait. Mostly because the case complaint is based on the children owning the consoles and thereby being allowed to sue. Judge dismissed it because the parents technically own the consoles (because apparently kids can’t own things), and as a result was dismissed. This isn’t really a win for Nintendo. There’s several pending lawsuits still ongoing.
While I always eyerolled at a lot of the class action lawsuit stuff, credit where credit is due – had the issue not been raised and a stink made about it in the gaming press and more publicly with the threats of having to fend off lawsuits, I doubt Nintendo would have done anywhere near as much to update their internal policies and made it as easy to send in and repair or replace joycons with issues.
I remember getting joycon drift early on when the switch first launched before it was a more widely known problem, and no one really believed it was a thing back then and going through support was a fair bit harder than after it became widely known and Nintendo updated their support policies.
I spend $9 on new joy sticks for the joycons. I replaced them myself. Haven’t had problems since. But since some people can’t do it. Send them back to Nintendo they do it for free.
This is a big L for consumers.
How is a statement in a license agreement that says “you can’t sue me” even legal? Even ignoring the fact that Switch is a publicly available physical product and a license agreement for it doesn’t make sense – for the software – maybe, for Nintendo services like the shop – maybe, but not for the physical product.
Many countries have lists of “abusive clauses”, which can’t be used in contracts and licenses and if they are used, they are considered null. On top of those lists are clauses that restrict responsibility of the seller/producer of sold services and products.
And here you aren’t even presented with the license or any agreement before you make a purchase of a defective Switch. Arguably you don’t even have to buy the Switch, since the same defect is present in JoyCons sold separately.
Several people are saying that they are getting away with it cause they are fixing them for free. Except when I first got my switch, year after it came out, I was in south Korea. With a month it started drifting. They forced me send the whole switch with the controllers to get repaired. Took them 2 months to send it back. Then a year later right after the warranty was over they started drifting again and this time they told me I had to pay to get them repaired. Maybe now they do it for free because of the amount of controllers that do this but in the beginning they said you have to pay to get it repaired if out of warranty. I just bought a second set and learned how to fix them myself.
I really hope these government judges help consumers here. If you buy a video game controller, consumers deserve the right to feel confident that it’s not going to break any time soon. Getting it replaced or repaired by Nintendo is nicer than nothing, but it’s still a huge pain in the butt.
I mean yeah. They don’t really sell them damaged and offer free repair, without saying that they work for lifetime.
It’s annoying and we all want them to make them better but I never expected this one to go far.
Of course it’s the American one.
Of course he did. Can’t hold big business accountable! s/
The judge is obviously wrong here.
There is plenty of precedent. “If you buy this product, you agree not to sue us” hasn’t held up before when people bought defective products.
If you go to Disney World, sign a form that says you won’t sue them, and then your kid gets molested by Goofy and the chef put arsenic in your wife’s meal, it won’t matter that you signed a form saying you wouldn’t sue. It doesn’t make it any less legal to commit crimes. And on the topic of Nintendo, no, selling a defective product on the assumption that it will work is not legal.
And it comes down to EU laws to hold the fort again
Nintendo. Great games, absolute shit business and ethics.
But, hey, at least they’re sorry!… After years of denial. Sure, they fix drifting joycons, but, those fixes still only last slfor only so long.
If they’re actually sorry, they’d stop making broken controllers.
I fail to see how this was never an issue before the Switch, but suddenly, it’s a problem now. What happened to their quality control? What happened to their ability to make good controllers?
Man, that sucks.
But everytime Nintendo wants to sue someone they win… wtf