The Steam Deck officially launched earlier this week, and Valve and PC gamers are doing a bit of a victory lap. But it’s not all good news, as there’s a pretty serious issue going on. According to customers on the Steam Deck subreddit, there are already issues of joystick drift on the new platform. Players are pretty upset over this, for obvious reasons. The drift issue is a huge problem, as it basically makes the console unplayable.
The problem with drift is that it makes analog stick inputs impossible to predict. It can cause the precise inputs to move a character to screw up, causing players to move too far in one direction, for example. Players will quickly find this very frustrating. So the issue very quickly blew up, as it is a major stain on the launch of a new PC gaming platform.
Anyone who has had to deal with the infamous stick drift on a console before knows how painful it can be to replace a controller. And with the likes of the Nintendo Switch also being infamous for this issue, it’s a huge hassle. Having Steam Deck drift would just be insulting. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear to be a hardware issue. The team over at Valve immediately jumped onto the issue, and found the fix. Apparently, it’s related to a software bug in the most recent firmware, hopefully, that remains the only issue.
Reddit users who complained about the issue have said the update seems to have fixed the issue. Let’s just hope that remains the only problem the Steam Deck has on its celebrated launch. If the hardware does turn out to have this drift issue, that’s going to be very bad news.
