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A Literal Child and His Mom Sue Nintendo Over 'Joy-Con Drift'
from the persistent-problem dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired:
A boy and his mother today filed a class action lawsuit against Nintendo for not doing enough to fix a hardware problem common among Nintendo Switch controllers. It is one of several legal efforts related to the issue of "Joy-Con drift" -- a phenomenon where the Switch Joy-Con controllers make in-game characters "drift" even when nobody is moving them. The complaint, filed in Northern California, was brought by a woman named Luz Sanchez and her 9- or 10-year-old son, who, as a minor, is referred to in court documents as M.S. The complaint describes how Sanchez purchased her son a Nintendo Switch in December 2018, when he was 8. Within a month, the complaint alleges, Sanchez's controllers began registering in-game movement when his hands weren't on them. Less than a year later, it says, "the Joy-Con drift became so pronounced that the controllers became inoperable for general gameplay use." Sanchez's mom obligingly purchased another set of controllers, but seven months later, the complaint alleges, they began drifting too. 

Joy-Con drift is pervasive among Switch devices. (Anecdotally, I've experienced it on two sets of my own controllers). Characters inch left or right as if a ghost was operating the console. Nintendo didn't acknowledge the problem much until July 2019. That month, a thread on the Nintendo Switch subreddit calling out Joy-Con drift received over 25,000 upvotes. More than a dozen Switch owners filed a potential class action lawsuit (PDF) at the time calling Joy-Cons "defective." Lawyers said Nintendo had heard users' complaints for long enough; why didn't the company disclose the issue? The 2019 lawsuit has been moved into arbitration, and the plaintiffs' lawyers recently asked Switch users to submit videos describing their experiences with Joy-Con drift to help bolster their case. Last month, a French consumer group filed a complaint, too, alleging planned obsolescence. Nintendo began fixing Joy-Cons for free, post-warranty, in July 2019, and Nintendo's president apologized for the problem in a financial meeting this summer. But Sanchez's lawyers argue that Nintendo hasn't done enough to fix the issue or warn customers about it up front.
Posted by BeauHD 41 minutes ago
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25 Comments
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Outstanding
Funny
Remember old school analog joysticks.. (+1)
Malays2 bowman 10 minutes ago
..the ones that had the sliders to account for drift in the mechanism? This is what the Switch needs.
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show butthoal 
Anonymous Coward 33 minutes ago
i sniff you're dogs butthoal;
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Live to ignore. (+1)
Anonymous Coward 28 minutes ago
Well, at least we have AC posting again. FWIW. BTW, it's spelled "hole."

On topic: this drift is s strong reason to never purchase a switch. Thankfully they made the platform easily shareable so people can decide whether they like the broken controllers.
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Electrical contact cleaner (+1)
DaFallus 31 minutes ago
Buy a can of WD40 electrical contact cleaner spray. Spray it under the little rubber cover at the base of the joysticks and the drift won't be an issue for quite some time. Slightly annoying and I wish Nintendo would recall them or something, but its cheap and easy to mitigate.
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Re: Electrical contact cleaner (+1)
JustASlashDotGuy 15 minutes ago
While that should work, I wonder if you could have just voided any chance for Nintendo to swap out/repair your controller in the future should a permanent fix become available. They may see evidence of the cleaning residue left behind and seize the opportunity to reject you.
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Re: Electrical contact cleaner (+1)
Lije Baley 15 minutes ago
Yes, but focus on the electrical contact cleaner bit, don't use regular WD40 lubricant. And after spraying it in, work the joysticks around vigorously for a while, and maybe repeat a time or two. If you are too poor for the contact cleaner, just work the sticks hard for a while and maybe that will help enough. It's the same routine we've been using on cruddy potentiometers and such for a hundred years.
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Firmware update? (+1)
Pascoea 30 minutes ago
How has this not been fixed by a firmware update yet? Or is the hardware really that jacked up that the system wouldn't be able to re-calibrate center? Looking at some of the videos, it would appear that the controller is returning to physical center. Or at least close enough that a bit of hysteresis and a calibration would get rid of it.
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Re: Firmware update? (+1)
_xeno_ 19 minutes ago
The answer to both your questions is yes: there has been a firmware update, and the controllers get jacked up enough that it doesn't matter.
They may look like they return to center but thanks to the firmware update with the recalibration options, you can see that they're still reading as being slanted sufficiently in one direction that trying to set a dead zone that large would effectively make them useless.
The cause of Joy Con Drift is apparently either a little rubber disc over the contacts starts to trap dirt to hold the contacts down or the contacts themselves start to wear down and flat-out misread. (People aren't entirely certain.)
But having had to replace a pair of Joy Cons I can personally guarantee it does happen and the calibration tool and corresponding Joy Con firmware update they added doesn't help.
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Re: Firmware update? (+1)
Malays2 bowman a few seconds ago
You would think that they would be using an optical system by now. Is Nintendo really using old fashioned resistive potometers in their analog sticks?
Among other things, these potometers are prone to wearing out and becoming noisy (the "pffft-zzzt" sound you hear when they are used as a volume control and you try to adjust the volume), which can reak absolute havoc on the character you are trying to control. This is an unnesseary point of failure in addition to the springs used for the actual stick.
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Re: Firmware update? (+1)
Dwedit 16 minutes ago
A firmware update could allow re-centering, recalibrating, and expanding the dead zone, but this is happening because the potentiometers are damaged.
Photo of damaged pots (some of carbon layer scratched off): https://i.imgur.com/8cyzrKs.jp...
Even if there was a firmware update to allow recalibrating the joysticks, they would lose the ability to distinguish a gentle push from a harder push for the entire axis. For instance, Up and slightly left would become just Up.
Not to mention this would mean admitting fault, and losing pride.
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Excellent 
Anonymous Coward 27 minutes ago
This confirms that the fourth turning is almost here and the spoiled deserve the devastation that will be wrought upon them.
And when that time comes it'll be fun watching them try to sue when they find a piece of bone in their daily ration of Purina One Choice Chicken Puree.
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Re: Excellent (+1)
bobbied 16 minutes ago
This confirms that the fourth turning is almost here and the spoiled deserve the devastation that will be wrought upon them.
And when that time comes it'll be fun watching them try to sue when they find a piece of bone in their daily ration of Purina One Choice Chicken Puree.
Soylent Green is People!
Welcome back AC!
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Lawyers will get $20M end users an $5 coupon (+1)
Joe_Dragon 23 minutes ago
Lawyers will get $20M end users an $5 coupon
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Re: Lawyers will get $20M end users an $5 coupon (+1)
bobbied 15 minutes ago
Lawyers will get $20M end users an $5 coupon
Sharks got to eat too..
I had a lawyer tell me once that the only people winning in a court room are the lawyers. Everybody else pays.
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N64 & maturity of controller technology (+1)
OrangeTide 22 minutes ago
This used to happen on the N64 controller too. It was avoided on the PC analog joysticks because you had to calibrate them every damn time you started a game. Eventually this kind of drift seemed to be taken care of on PS1 dual-shock and PS2 controllers. And by the time GC and XBox were around I think we'd flick the joystick around a bit and somehow the game would recalibrate.
There is a software defined dead-zone where the game doesn't register movement if the stick sits in that position for a while. If your game (or the system's SDK?) don't have a large enough dead-zone or any self-calibration, then you're at the mercy of the mechanics of your stick.
P.S. multiple edits required to post with /.'s new "Lameness filter". It's totally broken.
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Re: N64 & maturity of controller technology (+1)
bobbied 11 minutes ago
The PS2 controllers where switches I thought.. Meaning that it wasn't sensitive to how far the joystick moved, only that it was being pushed in some direction. I could be wrong, I cannot remember when I last had one of those controllers in my hands.
When you start doing proportional responses for a game controller, things get much more complex, over just watching for a switch closure.
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Makes sense (+1)
dicobalt 14 minutes ago
They charge $80 USD for a controller but can't make it work.
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