Nintendo Switch Joy-Con drift is real, and Nintendo is finally starting to respond to the issue. Ever since Switch came out - or more accurately, ever since players had enough time to put some mileage on their systems - people have found their Joy-Con analog sticks have taken on lives of their own, and not in the fun Toy Story way. Though you could always submit a ticket to have your Joy-Con repaired on Nintendo's official support site, the company has now put links to those pages front-and-center and addressed the issue in an official statement.
Joy-Con drift means the controllers detect a directional input when none is being applied. This typically isn't game-breaking, but it often is quite annoying. If you've ever noticed that, even when you're not touching the controller, your camera just keeps turning ever-so-slightly to one side or a map screen keeps slowly panning, you may have experienced the issue.
“At Nintendo, we take great pride in creating quality products and we are continuously making improvements to them,” a Nintendo representative told Kotaku. “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.”
You should try recalibrating your Joy-Cons via the options menu before you seek out support from Nintendo, but if that doesn't work, you'll probably have to pay for the repair (unless you're still under warranty or want to try doing the maintenance yourself). Or you could just pick up a new set of Joy-Cons, like that cute Purple/Orange combo Nintendo's putting out in time for Halloween, but there's no guarantee that they won't suffer the same fate eventually. Plus, you know, they're $80.
Hopefully Nintendo Nintendo gets this issue sorted out by the time Nintendo Switch Lite arrives in September, since you can't just pop its Joy-Cons off if they start malfunctioning - they're permanently attached!
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