I have believed playing Space Engineers can cause stick drift in controllers for a long time

TLDR

In the last year to year and a half, three controllers of varying age have developed stick drift within weeks of playing Space Engineers with them. Two Xbox Series controllers, one that was about a year old, the other had about a month of usage. One (admittedly) old Xbox One controller, though with the caveat of starting much, much sooner. The drift starts during play, and gets noticeably worse during play. It may be horrific luck that it happens with Space Engineers, but the circumstances are too coincidental to ignore myself so here we are.

I have enjoyed Space Engineers off and on since it was ported to console, specifically Xbox. I have SE2 wish listed on steam. I love survival crafters and Space Engineers is near the top of that list, due to this I will not stop playing of Space Engineers, I just won't be playing with a controller anymore.

As the title says I believe playing Space Engineers may somehow, even if indirectly, cause or lead to stick drift developing.

In my ~20 years of gaming I have lost and damaged many a controller.

Legitimately losing them - I would still like to know where my first wireless original Xbox controller disappeared to. Maybe the bottom of a box at the bottom of a stack of boxes at the back of a storage unit...somewhere.

I have had to tear down controllers because I spilled soda on them, all the buttons stick, and button mashing with 91% ISO isn't helping.

I have had them just completely stop working - likely a long term result of the following

I've had controllers broken due to falling sleep playing and then falling

And to gamer rage, I'll admit it.

I've lost a few to stick drift over the years. I always figured it was because I didn't take very good care of the controllers, each of the aforementioned being attributed to it.

But the number of controllers that have developed stick drift; and frequency of it happening, WHILE playing Space Engineers is highly suspect.

In the time span of a year, maybe a year n a half, I have had 3 controllers develop stick drift while playing Space Engineers. Two Xbox Series controllers and an Xbox One controller, all within weeks of beginning to play. To follow this, for the duration I am playing Space Engineers, it is the only thing I play until "take a break so you don't burn out" takes over.

I had a Series controller, the one provided with my Series X, develop stick drift while playing Space Engineers about a year ago. The Series controller was a back up, the controller I was using prior had the Right Bumper break when someone else dropped it. The drift got so bad that I nearly completely stopped console gaming. I literally could not stop rotating left unless I was moving or holding the joystick. ANY amount of rest in the stick and I was doing 1080's to the left like there was no tomorrow; I'm a high sensitivity player or I'd have said 360's. Dead zones in in-game settings for games that have them did nothing to alleviate the drift. I tested its dead zones with the Microsoft provided software on consoles to find that the stick was ALWAYS left, sometimes slightly down when it was "at rest".

Guess its a good thing I have a gaming laptop and desktop, right?

After some time had passed, I went into GameStop with my cousin one day in search of a game, I forget what. For the first time that I had seen one, there on the wall, a purple Series controller.

"I've seen the lime green, red, and blue at Walmart. I have both a red and a blue, I didn't even know they done purple! I'm buying that with my next check, its friggin purple"

I did not use the word friggin that day, BECAUSE IT WAS A FRIGGIN PURPLE XBOX CONTROLLER OMG. *insert grown man having a Bieber Fever fangirl level moment*

No shame

The controller sat in the unopened box for a while, long enough I think it actually passed GameStop's return window. I was focused on Overwatch 2 and how horrific my ability to aim on PC becomes the moment I start to panic. Once I opened the controllers box, I used it for about a month, playing Warframe, Borderlands 3, Tiny Tinas Wonderlands, Overwatch 2, a little bit of Wildlands, and a few indie games, on both PC and Xbox depending where I owned the game.

One day I woke with the urge to play Space Engineers. So play I did. For about a week I played Space Engineers solo in a creative world. Embracing my inner Ed from the old cartoon "Ed, Edd, and Eddy", I would say "dig a hole, dig a hole" anytime I would mess with drills, hand or block.

Then one day the stick drift started. it wasn't that big of a deal, "should have seen the stick drift I was dealing with from the last controller" I would say as I fight the very slight rotation to the left after I stopped moving. It became so frequent I even started factoring it in, going slightly to the right of containers so the drift would make me look at the hatch.

By the time I took the "don't burn out" break to play Tiny Tina's Wonderlands again... well lets just say I had a new found love for shotguns and the fact you don't need good aim with them. I guess its a good thing my aim was only ACTUALLY good in my teens, I left the desire to play with snipers behind many many years ago. I again contemplated giving up on console gaming.

The purple Series controller is now sitting in its box on a shelf next to my desk, that is how quickly it got bad enough not to use. I still had the box because of "I'm keeping the box so it has a protective cover when I'm not using it" mentality. While I'm not doing 1080's, it's enough I would rather not use it.

Then I remembered that when I gave my cousin the Xbox One he is using (long standing PS guy he was) I also gave him an my spare controller, an Xbox One controller. He later bought a lime green Series and an Elite Series controller, he uses the lime green one. I asked him for the Xbox One controller back because all mine had stick drift or a broken button (it was a kid of one of his flings that dropped the Right Bumper controller).

Guys when I say the controller is old, lemme tell you! I think this is the original Xbox One controller from the first Xbox One I got, The rubber on both thumbsticks started to wear away before I put thumbstick covers on it. Like you can actually see the plastic along the bottom edge of the sticks. It was in that state as a,controller that was used as a backup until I gave it to my cousin. He didn't play much and it was after he bought the lime green one, so he wasn't left without a controller.

With this controller in my possession again, I played more Overwatch 2, SnowRunner, Warframe, Ark (Evolved and Ascended), Borderlands 3, No Man's Sky, Techtonica, Trailmakers, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, and of course numerous indie games.

I began playing Space Engineers again about 3 weeks ago. Finally joined an official server, starting on Mars but only playing a couple days before someone in space offered to group up. He couldn't handle my extremely...eccentric building methods. Leaving the base in shambles during a remodel while I caught up on sleep was his final straw. I went to Mars after we split on otherwise good terms. He let me have a majority of the resources because I had done a majority of the gathering.

I have played on Mars for about a week. Scouting out a spot to start setting up a drill platform because I'm making an underground base. The drill keeps breaking due to faults of my own or I would probably be farther along in that journey. I also thought I had lost some progress which I made another bug report about.

Last night, I noticed the faintest of drifts. "Did the stick flip pass center?", I thought as I tried to open a container, after a very slight left rotation I didn't do. I moved the stick around a bit, noticing that left and down inputs are registered before right and up are registered (angle presumed to be relative to the "at rest" position). I finished welding together the grinding ship I was building so I could grind down my space ship when I got on today and hopped off for the night. During that time I noticed the drift go from a barely noticeable nudge to the left to having to correct back to the right to open a container.

Today, I get on with the sole intention of finishing the demolition of my space craft, only to find that every time I release the stick I look an estimated 5-15 degrees left, and it would occasionally look a degree or two left with no prior input. It was not a constant drift, mainly when initially releasing the stick and regardless of where the stick was positioned. It would drift regardless of where I would release it from, but I have not checked it in the software Microsoft provides on all Xboxs.

By the time I got to my space ship, a mere 5 kilometers from my drilling platform, I had noticed the grinding ship was swinging slightly to the left. When I ground a part of my ship I didn't want ground yet because of stick drift and the server lagging for .2 seconds I came to write this report. Thankfully the lag was due to the server saving before the server reset and I was set back to right before I started grinding my base

The real kicker?

I only started using the controller to play yesterday.

I figured since Xbox allows keyboard + mouse usage if the game supports it, and that since Space Engineers was originally on PC, Space Engineers on Xbox will work with keyboard + mouse (it does for anyone that sees this and is curious as well). I wanted to do something on my laptop while the EverBreakingDrill done its thing and began playing with the old One controller yesterday. The EverBreakingDrill consumed my time and I neglected what I wanted to do on PC.

NOT EVEN A FULL DAY OF PLAYING SPACE ENGINEERS AND THE CONTROLLER DEVELOPED STICK DRIFT. Years of sporadic usage in the time it would have been (outright) abused as a controller. Daily use for however long its been since getting it back from my cousin, like 6 months? I was swapping between No Man's Sky, SnowRunner, and Overwatch 2 before starting on Space Engineers again with not the slightest hint of a drift. Within 36 hours of using the controller to play Space Engineers the ability to aim accurately has disappeared because it doesn't stop looking left.

I'm honestly scared to continue playing Space Engineers with a controller, as it is my experience that playing Space Engineers is breaking my controllers. I do recognize that it could be some seriously dumb luck that it has happened with Space Engineers so frequently, but incase it's not I wanted to make a bug report.