[GameSpot] - Valve Responds To Steam Deck Thumbstick Issues

[343iBot]

Some Steam Deck owners have reported joystick drifting issues, and now Valve has responded. Designer Lawrence Yang said on Twitter that, after an investigation, Valve has identified the issue and has released a new patch to address it. This was a "deadzone regression," Yang said, and now it's been fixed.

"Hi all, a quick note about Steam Deck thumbsticks. 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," Yang said.

Steam Deck units recently began to ship, and some of the first units were personally hand-delivered by none other than Valve founder and billionaire Gabe Newell himself. Newell also spoke about how he wants people to send in their honest feedback about the Steam Deck, assuring fans that he reads every email he gets.

"I get anywhere from several hundred to several thousand emails a day. I read them all. And that keeps you super grounded. You know what people are actually thinking; what's actually important to them," he said.

Hi all, a quick note about Steam Deck thumbsticks. 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.

— Lawrence Yang (@lawrenceyang) March 2, 2022

GameSpot's Steam Deck review praises it as "a wonderfully constructed and powerful portable PC that can, in the right hands, be a lot more than what Valve envisions." Valve is still working on shipping the Steam Deck's first-quarter units. There is no scheduled launch date for the second wave of systems.

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[Alex Haliabarda]

Hardware issues like the Steam Deck thumbstick drift can really take the shine off new tech, especially when you’re mid-campaign and controls start acting up. I went through a similar headache not long ago and ended up digging around https://steam.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.html to see how others navigated repair requests and response times. It’s wild how much faster you can figure out your next step just by reading how other gamers handled the same mess.