Any one that has held one of the Nintendo Switch's Joy-Con controlelrs will be able to tell you that they are quite sturdy pieces of hardware. At the same time, however, users feels the need to baby said controllers so that they don't accidentally end up breaking them; because, let's face it, they are quite expensive too.
In order to take good care of them, some users may even opt to take matters into their own hands and clean the Joy-Con controllers on a regular basis. As it turns out, Nintendo isn't too happy about users doing this, especially because they tend to use alcohol to clean them — which can eventually lead to some technical issues.
Just a few days ago, Nintendo Consumer Serivce of Japan posted a tweet on their official Twitter account, encouraging Nintendo Switch owners not to clean neither their consoles nor Joy-Con controllers with alcohol, as it can cause the colour in plastic parts to fade and/or get deformed; especially now that we are facing a global pandemic and everyone is using alcohol gel to clean pretty much everything.
As per the translation thanks to the people over at Kotaku, Nintendo Consumer Service's official tweet reads as follows:
"Recently, customers have been asking whether they can disinfect their Nintendo Switch consoles and Joy-Cons with alcohol. We're very sorry to say please avoid using alcohol as it may cause the plastic parts to fade in color or deform."
"We also cannot recommend using non-alcoholic disinfecting sheets, as depending on the ingredients, they may damage the plastic parts," Nintendo further explained.
Nintendo has had a fair share of trouble with the Nintendo Switch's Joy-Con controllers. Just last year a bunch of users reported that their Joy-Con controllers' analog stick had began to drift, so it is only natural to see Nintendo's customer service encouraging users not to potentially put their controllers even more at risk.
While this goes without saying, it is more than likely that this warning also applies to Nintendo Switch Lite consoles. With that said, the Nintendo Switch Lite hasn't been reported to get the infamous Joy-Con drift — at least not en masse, and at least not yet — but it's still best that you don't use alcohol to clean that one either.