Nintendo's European subsidiary has been ordered to pay a fine of €35 million ($40 million) in France due to malfunctions in first-generation controllers for the Switch console.
The Paris-based competition and anti-fraud authority DGCCRF said on Monday that the Nintendo of Europe subsidiary accepted the fine offered as part of a settlement to bring an investigation into misleading business practices to a close.
The French authority said Nintendo of Europe, which is part of the major Japanese video game group, failed to provide consumers with transparent information about defects in certain Joy-Con controllers for the Switch 1, released in 2017.
This concerns a problem known as "drift," which leads to unintended movements of game characters and controller malfunctions. The Joy-Con controllers are detachable from the handheld console.
The DGCCRF found that Nintendo only began informing consumers about the "drift" fault in 2020, rather than from the moment the company became aware of the problem.
The "delayed and incomplete communication" deterred consumers from contacting Nintendo’s customer service and led some to buy new controllers, according to the DGCCRF’s statement. The authority said this conduct constituted a misleading commercial practice between 2018 and 2023.
In 2023, Nintendo of Europe officially committed to repair controllers affected by the defect across Europe free of charge, even in cases where the statutory warranty period had expired.
Nintendo of Europe emphasized to dpa that agreeing to the settlement did not constitute an admission of guilt. It merely reflected the "amicable settlement of legal proceedings."
