Valvehas finally released theSteam Deckon February 25th, with promises that it will evenfixElden Ring’s stuttering issues. However, even this handheld device is not immune to the curse of the joystick drift.
Handheld gaming devices have been popular ever since the early years of Nintendo as a gaming company with the Game Boy,so it wasinevitable that Valve would begin a plan to break into this part of the industry. The Steam Deck was announced back in July 2021, and it is a handheld gaming computer that is meant to be used to play all games available in the Steam library.
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Twitter user Wario64 posted a tweet revealing that someSteam Deckusers are already experiencing some stick drift on their devices. He cites two Reddit posts from users hollandje and KimJongThorse both with videos detailing the tests they conducted in their device settings, showing their right stick drifting when they point it downwards. The problem only seems to be happening with the right stick so far.
This is very unfortunate to see, but not something handheld users have not seen before, having dealt with it on the Nintendo Switch seemingly since launch.Valve said early on that it would attempt to avoid having drifting on the Steam Deck, but it seems like this issue is just hard to avoid no matter what is done.
As mentioned before, the drifting issue only seems to be plaguing the right stick on the device and not the left one so far. It’s only the early days of launch so of course, it’s possible that these problems can be ironed out in future productions of the device since the issue is inherently hardware-related.Valve has been clear on how plentiful supplies are for future Steam Decks with after previous shortages, so any users after this first wave might not have to deal with this issue.
Even if it is fixed eventually, this issue has been around for a while,even on Xbox controllers. This issue needs to be inspected much more thoroughly in the future to prevent any more instances of drifting in brand-new consoles and devices. That being said, it is still right to be cautious about being the first few to get the newest and most anticipated devices such as the Steam Deck at launch since this could continue to be an issue going forward.
