Sony is facing a class action lawsuit over its reported failure to honor warranty agreements on PlayStation 5 controllers with obvious “drift” defects.
In a complaint filed in the Southern District of New York on February 12, the Japanese conglomerate is accused of violating consumer fraud statutes and breaching warranty agreements related to the PS5 DualSense wireless controllers, which the suit alleges have an obvious defect that allows the characters to drift across the screen even when a user isn’t moving the controller’s joystick.
Lmarc Turner, the lead plaintiff listed in the complaint, claims that he immediately experienced a drift issue with the controller after he took his PS5 home in early February. But after contacting customer services, Turner was reportedly left with some lame advice about troubleshooting the defective controller and not much else in the way of help.
Eventually, “[g]iven that his experience with contacting Sony the first time did not satisfactorily address the drift issue,” Turner bought another DualSense controller for $69.99 a few days later, but “Had [he] been aware of the Drift Defect prior to purchasing his PS5, he otherwise would not have purchased the PS5, or would have paid substantially less for it,” the complaint says.
The suit also claims that Sony had to have known how widespread the drift issue was, particularly given “online consumer complaints, complaints made by consumers directly to it, and through its own pre-release testing.”
“This defect significantly interferes with gameplay and thus compromises the DualSense Controller’s core functionality,” the complaint says.
The DualSense controllers were released alongside the PS5 console in November to much fanfare after selling out via preorder pretty much everywhere.
The lawsuit calls for Sony to launch a recall or free replacement program in order to replace the faulty controllers for all class members, and also calls for damage payments to be paid out to consumers in order to recompense them for buying new controllers or any other out of pocket expenses to fix the alleged defect.