France Fines Nintendo $40M for Hiding Joy-Con Drift

Between 2018 and 2023, Nintendo knew its Joy-Con controllers had a drift problem. According to France's consumer protection authority, the company chose not to tell customers. That silence just cost Nintendo of Europe €35 million, roughly $40 million.

The fine comes from France's General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF), which determined that Nintendo of Europe committed a "misleading commercial practice" by failing to disclose known Joy-Con defects to consumers. The investigation, first reported by Le Monde, found that Nintendo was aware of responsiveness issues and stick drift as early as 2018 but didn't publicly address the problem until Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa issued a formal apology at a financial meeting in June 2020. Two years of silence while customers bought replacement controllers they may never have needed.

The distinction here matters. The DGCCRF didn't fine Nintendo for manufacturing a defective product. It fined them for hiding it. The regulator argued that Nintendo's failure to communicate transparently "altered economic behavior of consumers," pushing people to spend money on new Joy-Cons instead of seeking repairs. I think exactly right, and it's the part of this story that should make other hardware manufacturers pay attention. Selling a product that breaks is one thing; knowing it breaks and letting your customers blame themselves is something else entirely.

The Complaint That Started It

The investigation traces back to a 2020 complaint from UFC-Que Choisir, a French consumer association that had already warned in 2019 of possible "planned obsolescence" in Nintendo's controllers. The group noted that Nintendo's own manufacturing updates hadn't fixed the drift issue, despite the company being aware of it internally. UFC-Que Choisir has a track record of going after gaming companies; they've previously sued both Ubisoft and Valve.

Nintendo, predictably, isn't admitting fault. In a statement given to Le Monde, the company denied that it "intentionally misled consumers" and clarified that agreeing to pay the settlement "does not constitute an admission of guilt and reflects only the amicable resolution of legal proceedings." Corporate legalese for "we'd rather pay than fight this in court," but €35 million is not pocket change, even for Nintendo. As part of the settlement, Nintendo of Europe must also publish a notice about the ruling on its French website and continue honoring repair requests past the warranty period, building on a 2023 pledge to make all such repairs free.

Joy-Con drift has been one of the most persistent hardware complaints in modern gaming. UK watchdog Which claimed that over 40% of original Switch Joy-Con controllers were affected. A class-action lawsuit filed in the US in 2019 collected testimonies from Switch owners who encountered drift on both new and freshly repaired controllers. That lawsuit was dismissed in 2024, but the sheer volume of complaints across regions tells you how widespread the defect was.

What stands out about France's approach is the focus on information rather than the defect itself. Regulators didn't try to prove Nintendo deliberately designed controllers to fail. They proved Nintendo knew about a problem and chose not to warn buyers. If you bought a pair of Joy-Cons in 2019, you had no way of knowing the company was already fielding internal reports about drift. You'd just think your controller was broken, buy another set for £60, and move on. That's the consumer harm the DGCCRF zeroed in on, and it's a cleaner, harder-to-dodge argument than trying to prove planned obsolescence.

Now that the Switch 2 has been on the market for about a year with its redesigned smooth-gliding sticks, the timing of this ruling is almost a bookend on the original Switch's most embarrassing chapter. No widespread drift complaints have surfaced for the new hardware yet. Whether Nintendo actually fixed the underlying mechanical issue or just bought itself time remains to be seen as more units age in the wild.

The DGCCRF's press release confirmed that Nintendo of Europe accepted the fine and the accompanying obligations. Nintendo's French website will carry a public notice about the ruling, a small but pointed requirement that forces the company to acknowledge the findings on its own turf.