Absolutely nothing wrong! We use similar joysticks in more missions critical jobs, but people are ignorant sometimes, joystick is bad but a fuse or transistor or other component costing $0.3 is completely fine.
Nothing is wrong with a consumer grade, wireless, AA battery operated, gaming controller as a steering control interface for a submersible taking you down 10K ft under the ocean to maneuver around a 10 story high entangled mess of steel in pitch darkness with a flash light.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong either with the decision making process of the engineers thinking that was a good (and fun) idea.