Steam Deck Users Already Experiencing Drift, Valve Fixes Instantly

Some users were reporting that their Steam Deck was already experiencing drift issues, but this has turned out to be a firmware update that Valve has already fixed.

The number one biggest complaint most people have with the Nintendo Switch is the drift on the joy cons. It has been an issue since year one of the console, and Nintendo just has not provided a permanent solution to the problem. So when players were reporting that the Steam Deck already has a drift issue, some eyebrows were very quickly raised. 

Deals wizard Wario64 showed off a video on Twitter of the issue in question, showing a Reddit user trying to calibrate their right analogue stick. The video shows that when resting, the analogue stick isn’t perfectly centered. Which considering this is meant to be a handheld unit, is most definitely a problem. 

Thankfully though, it turned out that this was simply a firmware issue. Valve designer Lawrence Yang spoke about the issue on Twitter saying, “Hi all, a quick note about Steam Deck thumbsticks. The team has looked into the reported issues and it turns out it was a deadzone regressions from a recent firmware update. We just shipped a fix to address the bug, so make sure you’re up to date.

It’s great to see Valve act so quickly on the matter. And that it’s a software issue rather than a hardware one. The biggest problem with the joy cons is that it is specifically because the physical device starts to no longer work. It is still early days for the Steam Deck so things could change. But at least for now there isn’t much to worry about other than poor battery life.

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Featured Image Credit: Valve