Steam Deck Won’t Have Analog Stick Drifting Issues, Valve Assures

Analog stick drifting issues have gone hand-in-hand with consoles for a long time, but in recent years, they’ve become particularly prevalent. The Nintendo Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S have all faced the issue to varying degrees, while Sony and Nintendo have both also been hit with class action lawsuits as a result. Thankfully, it seems like we won’t have to worry about that problem with Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck.

Speaking with IGN, hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat gave assurances that Valve has taken several measures to ensure that their upcoming handheld gaming PC doesn’t run into problems on this front. While no parts in the device are going to last forever, Valve seems confident that thumbstick drifting isn’t going to be an issue.

“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,” said Aldehayyat. “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.”

Meanwhile, Steam Deck designer John Ikeda added: “We purposely picked something that we knew the performance of, right? We didn’t want to take a risk on that, right? As I’m sure our customers don’t want us to take a risk on that either.”

The Steam Deck launches in select regions of the world this December, with more regions being added to Valve’s plans soon. Stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks.