Topic: Stick Drift (only on certain games)

This seems really odd to me, but my controller has stick drift...but only on one game. The other dozen or so games that I play are perfectly fine. In Star Trek online, my character/ship will lazily drift off to the left until I tap the stick to the right real quick. No other game I have does this. On one other game, the X button was randomly pressing, but I took the controller apart and cleaned the contacts and then proceeded to play for more than an hour just fine.

I would think that if the controller was messed up, I'd have drift on that stick on more than just the one game. The only other place I get the drift is if I'm trying to navigate the web browser..which thankfully I don't really use that much.

@Spottedfeather My OG DualShock 4 has this too — I only have drift on a few games and not on some others. In fact, on certain games it doesn’t drift during gameplay but only drifts on the map screen. I believe it has to do with how the game is programmed with stick sensitivity. I’m assuming the drift won’t occur when the game is designed with a “harder” push of the stick required to move, or a larger “dead zone” for the stick.

Interestingly I tried shooting some compressed air into the stick and it helped for a while but then came back. The controller is so old (…9 years?) and has a lot of miles on it, so I’m not too bothered.

Thankfully neither of my DualSense controllers have given me any trouble yet.

@Spottedfeather I think it’s down to developers and how they program the dead zone for the analogue sticks. Sounds like you do have a small drift problem and Star Trek has a very small/no dead zone threshold, perhaps. Where as for the other games you are trying, they are programmed not to recognise such small movements.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/disciplines/doing-thumbstick-de...

@Th3solution

@kyleforrester87 tried to clean the controller with alcohol. didn't work. tried some electrical contact cleaner. didn't work. at least it doesn't seem to be any worse....but I finally cracked and ordered a new controller....