The reason behind the Switch being bricked by some third party docks may have been discovered

I only ever go with licensed accessories and peripherals on all my systems, Nintendo or otherwise. I'm absolutely paranoid about something breaking my portable/console, and I always have been. That said, I never thought it to be wrong for others to go with third party options. I am just extra paranoid about that stuff, or so I thought.

For quite awhile now, there have been reports of the Switch being bricked by third party docks. Most of the time you hear complaints tied to Nyko's dock, but they aren't the only company causing issues. Other third party docks have resulted in bricked Switch units as well. What's the deal here? Surely there has to be some explanation for all this.

Thanks to Reddit users Nathan K. and Intoxicus5, we may finally have an answer. Once again, I'm too dumb to grasp the full explanation, so I'm going to pull information from what these two Reddit sleuths have discovered.

- the USB-C protocols in the Switch do not "play nice" with third party products
- the Switch USB Type-C power supply is not USB-PD spec compliant
- this means it overdraws some USB-PD power supplies by 300%

As you can see, overdrawing some power supplies by 300% could certainly cause one hell of an issue. If this information is correct, it would seem Nintendo is the one to blame here. Just to be extremely clear, this is not an official explanation of the situation, and no companies involved have offered up a clear-cut answer. For now, the only thing we can say for sure is to stay away from third party docks and stick with what Nintendo offers.