You may have heard about the bad press that Nintendo are getting as of late with regards to “Joy-Con drift”, which is when your movement in a game begins to drift slowly in a particular direction even if you aren’t touching the analogue sticks. There’s so much bad press around it at the minute that law firm Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith (bit of a mouthful isn’t it?) has filed a class-action lawsuit against Nintendo of America over the matter, on behalf of Ryan Diaz and “all others similarly situated”.
Well it appears that Nintendo is beginning to react, as VICE has reportedly got hold of a Nintendo of America internal memo which informs all of its customer service representatives to offer out free repairs to any player who reports Joy-Con drift with no questions asked, meaning that no players will be asked to provide proof of purchase. Additionally, players won’t have to have an active warranty to get a free repair, and any players who have already paid for a Joy-Con repair previously can request a refund.
VICE are citing “a source familiar with Nintendo’s updated customer support documentation” as being responsible for leaking the information, although their exact identity will remain anonymous. VICE reportedly tried to contact Nintendo of America for comment about the memo but just got the same generic response that Nintendo has been sending out to everybody over the last few days, which reads:
“At Nintendo, we take great pride in creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them. We are aware of recent reports that some Joy-Con controllers are not responding correctly. We want our consumers to have fun with Nintendo Switch, and if anything falls short of this goal we always encourage them to visit http://support.nintendo.com so we can help.”
Interestingly, Nintendo of Europe seemed unaware of the new stance on Joy-Con repairs when they were contacted by Eurogamer, so the change could be so fresh that it hasn’t made its way around the whole of Nintendo yet.
Regardless, this seems like an important change for Nintendo to make for the sake of saving face and for some good PR. There has been no official word from Nintendo regarding the matter as of yet, but we’ll update this article as and when there is.
Leave a Reply