The EU wants an investigation of the Switch's Joy-Con 'drift' issues

The European Union's joint consumer program has urged an investigation into the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con drift issue after it received almost 25,000 complaints from across the continent. Drift occurs when the Joy-Cons don't communicate properly with the console or when they start to register inputs by themselves, such as a character moving without a player touching a thumbstick.

The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) said that 88 percent of respondents from across the EU claimed their Joy-Cons broke within the first two years of use. The body has submitted complaints to the European Commission (the EU's executive branch) and national consumer protection agencies, claiming that “Nintendo continues to sell products that fail prematurely, which is harming consumers and the environment.”

The BEUC urged Nintendo to tell users that the controllers, as things stand, have a "limited lifespan" and to repair them for free. The company has fixed Joy-Cons in the past at no cost to consumers.

The Joy-Con drift problem has been widely reported since the Switch arrived almost four years ago. Nintendo has faced numerous class-action lawsuits over the matter and Engadget's readers have flagged problems with the controllers. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa apologized last June for "any inconvenience caused to our customers regarding Joy-Con" without explicitly mentioning drift.