A New York law firm have filed a class action lawsuit against Sony, over the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller joystick drifting defect.
As previously reported, PlayStation 5 users had been reporting claims that the DualSense controller is suffering from joystick drift. Drifting is when the joystick remains untouched, yet input is still registered. One user on social media claimed the fault occurred just 10 days after purchase.
Now, GamesIndustry.biz have been sent documents from Law firm Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP, and their class action lawsuit against Sony. The lawsuit was filed February 12th in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. One of the plaintiffs include Lmarc Turner, but there are other “similarly situated consumers.”
The lawsuit argues that fault “compromises the DualSense Controller’s core functionality,” adding that Sony should already be aware of the issue due to online complaints. The aforementioned 10-day fault and Kotaku’s reporting on the matter were directly quoted as well.
It further accused that Sony had failed to disclose the defect to customers after learning of the issue. Combined with the how repair options are “slim,” the lawsuit argues Sony have acted in violation of business law.
“As a result of Sony’s unfair, deceptive, and/or fraudulent business practices, owners of DualSense Controllers, including Plaintiff, have suffered an ascertainable loss, injury in fact, and otherwise have been harmed by Sony’s conduct. Accordingly, Plaintiff brings this action to redress Sony’s violations of state consumer fraud statutes, breach of warranty, and unjust enrichment. Plaintiff seeks monetary relief for damages suffered, declaratory relief, and public injunctive relief.”
The form for the lawsuit’s investigation into others who have suffered the drifting issue can be found here.
This now means all of the “Big Three” in console gaming have had issues with their console’s controllers having a drifting defect, and had class action lawsuits against them. Microsoft extended the Xbox Wireless Elite Series 2 controller warranty to one year in October 2020, after it was added to the Xbox One Elite controller drift class-action lawsuit.
Of course the more well known and prolific drift issue is with the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons. In case you missed our prior reports, the Joy-Cons’ issues resulted in a class action lawsuit by Chimicles, Schwartz Kriner, & Donaldson-Smith in July 2019. Reports suggest Nintendo even began repairing Joy-Cons for free mere days after the lawsuit became public knowledge.
The Nintendo Switch Lite was later added to the lawsuit, and the hardware failure causing the drift was exposed. Curiously, a Tencent representative (the distributor of the Nintendo Switch in China) told a customer that the drift was caused by playing an imported game.
In late December, 2019 we also reported how French consumer magazine 60 millions de consommateurs awarded Nintendo their “Golden Cactus” award (specifically the “Cactus of the Too Fragile Product”), which is given to products and services that cause the most frustration. Belgian consumer organization Testankoop also demanded Nintendo repair all Joy-Cons for free, and honor a two year warranty.
In May 2020, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled a lawsuit against Nintendo due to the Joy-Con drift must go to arbitration.In early October 2020, a mother and son sued Nintendo over the Joy-Con drift, asking for over $5,000,000 USD.
Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa reportedly apologized “for any inconvenience caused to our customers” due to the drift, during an investor Q&A in June 2020. Since July 2019, Nintendo have been repairing Joy-cons even outside of users’ warranties.
A collective of European consumers’ associations announced in early December 2020 that they were investigating the infamous Joy-Con drift defect. As part of the European Green Deal (“promoting policy to make consumer products more sustainable”) curbing issues with durability, repairability, and tackling products that fail sooner than expected are “high on the agenda.”
On January 15th, Canadian lawfirm Lambert Avocat Inc. have announced they have started a class action lawsuit for those in Québec.
Image: PlayStation
