Valve has already fixed the Steam Deck’s joystick drift issues

The first batch of Steam Deck portables shipped earlier this week but players have already reported joystick drift problems.

According to Valve, the glitch is a “deadzone calibration” bug and the company has already shipped a fix for it. Joystick drift happens when the controls register movements the player didn’t actually make.

So when joystick drift started happening with the Steam Deck, players were quick to share the problem. Yesterday (March 1) on the Steam Deck subreddit, Stijnnl uploaded a video alongside the title “Unfortunately I’m already experiencing stick drift…” with another user having similar issues.

However, a reply from Valve confirmed it was a software issue rather than a problem with the hardware, and the company has already shipped a fix. Taking to Twitter, Valve designer Lawrence Yang shared a similar message.

“Hi all, a quick note about Steam Deck thumbsticks,” he wrote. “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.”

Last year in an interview hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said that the Steam Deck had been built to avoid issues like joystick drift. “We’ve done a ton of testing on reliability, on all fronts really – and all inputs and different environmental factors and all that kind of stuff,” he explained.

“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.”

Issues with joystick drift have also plagued the Nintendo Switch since launch. As Nintendo Of America’s president Doug Bowser still promises “continuous improvements” almost six years after the console was first released.

In other news, a Twisted Metal TV show is officially on the way.