Unlike the Switch, Valve says people shouldn’t worry about Steam Deck drift

‘We’ve done a ton of testing on reliability’

Valve recently announced the Steam Deck, and the internet has been ablaze with takes. Like most things Valve I’m in “wait and see” mode, as several provisos have come out beyond the initial reveal that might not make it the “Switch Killer” a lot of people hope it will be. Speaking of the Switch, the comparisons are going to be natural due to the similar look of the device, and Valve is already talking about preventing Steam Deck drift.

Here’s the full quote from Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat when asked about Steam Deck drift, speaking to IGN:

“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. 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.”

A designer for the Steam Deck, John Ikeda, chimes in too on Steam Deck drift:

“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.”

Was that a dig? Ha!

Now of course Valve is going to say “our product works great!” Until the thing is actually out there and played with, and we see how much rigor this device can withstand over time, it’s just a hope. But Valve is just one in a long line of manufacturers who have designed a portable device with an analog stick, so it’s entirely possible that everything will in fact be fine, and the Switch is the anomaly.