With the roll-out of the first Steam Deck last week, users have already been reporting a very worrying problem. That’s right, the dreaded issue that has plagued the Switch for years has made an appearance on Steams’ own hardware. Stick drift once again rears it’s ugly head.
This is a problem that has also affected PlayStation and Xbox players, too. It involves a slight drift of the analog sticks while gaming, which has in-game impacts of course. This is a huge issue in precision-heavy games and is especially bemoaned in online gaming.
Whilst one or two reported incidents of stick drift are not conclusive of a manifest problem, it’s still worrying. But as the cases began to grow, and this video was released on Reddit, it now seems fairly conclusive. The bad news is that Valve has acknowledged that this is in fact a widespread problem. The good news, they say, is that the firmware fix has already rolled out.
The Response from Valve on Steam Deck Drift
UX designer for Valve, Lawrence Yang took to Twitter to alleviate concerns. He said,
“The team has looked into the reported issues and it turns out it was a deadzone regression from a recent firmware update. We just shipped a fix to address the bug, so make sure you’re up to date.”
Following this, a Reddit user posted a direct response from Valve confirming the same.
The reason this was so disappointing for some was that stick drift was specifically addressed by Valve leading to the launch of the Steam Deck. It was a huge concern from the community, given the history on other platforms. But unlike the Nintendo Switch, the input controls on the Steam Deck are not easily replaced. So if stick drift makes an unwelcome appearance, there’s not a lot consumers can do.
Valve addressed this specifically. Back in July Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said,
“I think we feel that this will perform really well. And I think people will be super happy with it. I think that it’s going to be a great buy. I mean, obviously, every part will fail at some point, but we think people will be very satisfied and happy with this.”
Of course, the response from Valve is encouraging, but time will tell if the problem persists post the fix. Still, if the firmware update is indeed live now, we shouldn’t have to wait too long. All eyes on r/SteamDeck for now.
Source; PC Gamer
“Video games are great. I should know, I’ve played some.”
Olly S, July 2020