Are Steam Deck Owners Running into Joystick Drift Problems

Joystick drift is a problem that many controllers have, a problem that may be hard to fix for the regular user who may have no other options than to send it to the manufacturer for repair or buy a new controller altogether.

Having been released a few days back, many expected the Steam Deck console to not suffer from joystick drift by using the latest technology for its controller. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case, although Valve may have already fixed the issue.

Are Steam Deck Owners Running into Joystick Drift Problems

Over the past few hours, many users over Reddit and Twitter started reporting that the Steam Deck does suffer from joystick drift. The issues do not seem to be widespread, but given how few units managed to reach the hands of players up until now, it is hard to say for certain.

The reporting of these issues, however, brought Valve to look into the issue, and it seems like it is not related to a manufacturing issue, but to a software one. Valve’s designer Lawrence Yang confirmed on Twitter that joystick drift issues depend on a deadzone regression from a recent firmware update. A new update has already gone live to address these issues.

Unfortunately, Valve’s fix may have introduced another issue, as following the update, the Steam Deck may no longer be able to register very small stick movements, something that greatly impacts the control’s accuracy. Valve has yet to comment on the issue, so we do not know if it will eventually be fixed.

As for every new console, technical issues of all sorts were expected for the Steam Deck, but not many expected to have to deal with joystick drift a few days after launch. Will Valve be able to fix all the issues found in its new gaming system? Only time will tell. For now, just treat your joysticks with care!