Valve’s Steam Deck suffers from stick drift claim early adopters

metro.co.uk:

The same problem that affected the Nintendo Switch and other controllers is haunting the Steam Deck, according to early reports.

The Nintendo Switch was a smash hit from the moment it was released but the one problem that’s plagued the hardware from the very beginning is stick drift, where the controller causes in-game movement even when you don’t touch it.

It’s been particularly prevalent on the Switch, with Nintendo making the situation worse by never properly acknowledging it or offering universal free repairs in the UK, but the same basic issue has also hit the PlayStation 5 DualSense and most other modern controllers.

In that sense, it’s no surprise to find out that it’s also an issue on the Steam Deck portable PC, especially given how much it resembles the Switch, with a number of reports having already appeared online.

Owners on Reddit have documented the problem, with early attempts to fix it revolving around a software solution where you can change the dead zone on the analogue sticks.

The consoles do have a one year guarantee but while the ideal fix would be to get a new one the large backlog of orders is going to make that very difficult in the short term.

The other option is to replace the parts yourself as, unlike regular consoles, the Steam Deck is designed to be taken apart and components replaced or upgraded.

That’s probably not something a lot of people are going to be happy doing with their expensive new portable though, so, as usual, that leaves the problem of stick drift without any easy answers.

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