The Steam Deck has been on the market for less than a week and already issues of joystick drift have started cropping up. Although the portable PC was officially released on Friday, February 25, that was when people could first start ordering the machine. First wave owners will mostly be received their Decks this week.
Already, in the last day, three owners in the Steam Deck subreddit (r/SteamDeck) have posted videos of drift occurring with the right joystick. The videos all show the same similar issue of the right joystick drifting to the left, as shown in the software of the Steam Deck. Although there’s only a small sample size of users with issues so far, it’s concerning that these Decks are having the issue after only a few hours of use.
Check out the videos Steam Deck owners have posted below.
Stick drift is something that has become more of a concern in recent years, particularly with the Nintendo Switch. The Switch is notorious for the issue and it’s something that Nintendo hasn’t been able to adequately remedy. Time will tell whether, like the Switch, this is a hardware problem with the Steam Deck or a few faulty models. Hopefully, it is the latter and these models can be replaced by Valve right away.
The Steam Deck is one of the most anticipated devices of 2022. Pre-orders for the portable PC sold out almost instantly when the Deck was announced last year. Pre-orders started slipping back from the release date and currently any pre-order is estimated to arrive “After Q2 2022” with no firm idea of when after Q2 that could be. While stick drift isn’t likely to affect many gamers’ decision to purchase the system, it could be a long-term headache for Valve with customers seeking to swap their models for one without drift. If the issue is widespread.