- Hardware
Valve has already released a fix for the Steam Deck stick drift
A speedy recovery.
Following early reports of some Steam Deck users suffering from stick drift, Valve has patched out the underlying bug causing the issue.
Valve UX designer Lawrence Yang issued a brief statement on Twitter stating that the stick drift issue is now under control. The stick drift was a result of deadzone regression from a firmware update, according to Yang. Users who were previously experiencing the bug and did not attempt to adjust their Steam Decks deadzone manually shouldn’t experience any more drift as long as their handheld is updated.
“We just shipped a fix to address the bug, so make sure you’re up to date,” said Yang.
Valve has been hard at work trying to make its new handheld a success and as a part of that effort, the company has rolled out numerous updates since the Steam Deck test units went out to early reviewers. Hiccups like this are bound to happen with any launch, but stick drift is an especially frustrating issue to have not three days into the Steam Deck’s life cycle.
Fortunately for Valve and early adopters of the Steam Deck, the issue was easier to resolve than something the Xbox One controller or Nintendo Switch Joy-Con drift. Still, many users were left trying to find fixes on Reddit, which yielded some positive results for users. After initially posting about their Steam Deck stick drift, Redditor hollandje came up with a fix that addressed the deadzone regression.
Valve’s Steam Deck launched Feb. 25 and shipped on Feb. 28. The company’s co-founder and president, Gabe Newell, even mobilized to hand-deliver a few Steam Decks to a few reservation holders and non-reservation holders.