A federal judge has denied Nintendo's request to dismiss the class action lawsuit over the drift problem found with the Nintendo Switch

Top Class Actions reports that US district judge Thomas S. Zilly rejected Nintendo's dismissal request but did agree to have the case handled in arbitration for now. That means the issue will be resolved outside of the courts by a neutral party known as an arbitrator.

However, Judge Zilly has only put the case on hold until the arbitrator comes to a decision. Once a decision has been made, the case could still return to the courts. Nintendo and the customers trying to sue the company have to report the outcome of the arbitration to the courts 14 days after a decision has been made, or by December 31, 2020 - whichever comes first.

Loading

The class-action lawsuit was filed against Nintendo by Ryan Diaz back in September 2019. He claimed that Nintendo sold the Switch's Joy-Cons as if they didn't have any defects while knowing that they had a drift problem. He says that Nintendo then charged customers to repair Joy-Cons with the drift issue.

Drift, in this case, refers to the joysticks on the Joy-Cons registering movements despite there being none, causing cursors and reticles to drift across the screen. Diaz claims that Nintendo must have known about the drift in some Joy-Cons as he and other customers contacted the company about it online to get it repaired.

He decided to try to sue Nintendo for the financial damage this defect has caused customers and demanded that Nintendo fix Joy-Cons with the drifting issue for free. Nintendo has since decided to repair Joy-Cons with drift for free and has refunded customers that were previously charged to have it repaired.

11 Other Nintendo Switch Lite Color Options We'd Love To See 11 IMAGES

IGN held a survey last year to get an idea of how many Switch players had experienced the Joy-Con drift issue. In total, 9774 IGN readers out of 26,000 said they had, which is about 38%, not an insignificant percentage. If you're experiencing Joy-Con drift then there's a guide on how to get it fixed.

Chris Priestman is a freelancer who writes news for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.