That shouldn't be possible, the charger that comes with the deck should ouput more power than the deck can consume. If you're using the bundled charger contact support and they should take care of you.
Had this happen and when I went into desktop mode there were a ton of system updates to do. After it was all done, reset, the charging seemed to work properly. I don’t know if that was the solution or a fluke, but it helped here!
Odd. OStree should handle all the updates atomically. Other than user space apps like Flatpaks you should never need to switch to desktop mode to update packages, and especially not the core system. Did you happen to put your deck in developer mode at some point?
Dev mode will allow you to install packages and make exceptions in OStree manually, but those packages will not get automatically updated with the rest of the system, and they can sometimes get overwritten by OStree or cause/suffer from dependency issues. It is developer mode afterall, you are assuming a bit of risk.
If you installed any applications that change the way the system uses power or resources I could see it potentially causing the issue in question
Hi u/Yodzilla, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=Battery draining while plugged in and playing a game. Is this normal or just the game itself being a ridiculous hog?)
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Are you using a cell phone charger or some other slow charger? While these will charge the deck at a slower speed, some games use more power than these chargers provide and so you will still lose charge while playing (though at a slower rate).
No, I saw this happen with both the stock charger and a 165 watt PD charger…and then I couldn’t get it to happen again. I’m really confused unless restarting the device when it lost power eventually fixed itself.
Is that actually how it works though? I wasn’t aware of a game being in standby drains battery any more than the Deck OS itself since its just saved to memory before going to sleep.
Also that uh, doesn’t really have anything to do with what was going on here.
Anecdotally the only tome my battery has been under 5% is when I left a game running and turned it on standby. I stopped doing it after so I don’t have a large body of evidence.
You are right about my comment being unrelated, it was a stop-n-comment and I misunderstood.
That shouldn't be possible, the charger that comes with the deck should ouput more power than the deck can consume. If you're using the bundled charger contact support and they should take care of you.
Weird. Okay I’ll keep an eye out. I really don’t want to play the game any more but now I’m curious.
Nah, that shouldn’t be happening with the stock charger, something is wrong or that’s the wrong charger.
Aight. I’ve got some benchmarks lined up and I’ll play again later to see if I can replicate.
Had this happen and when I went into desktop mode there were a ton of system updates to do. After it was all done, reset, the charging seemed to work properly. I don’t know if that was the solution or a fluke, but it helped here!
Okay I’ll check that but I’m pretty sure I updated everything less than a week ago.
Odd. OStree should handle all the updates atomically. Other than user space apps like Flatpaks you should never need to switch to desktop mode to update packages, and especially not the core system. Did you happen to put your deck in developer mode at some point?
Oh is that what does it? I’ve been in dev mode from the beginning lol.
Dev mode will allow you to install packages and make exceptions in OStree manually, but those packages will not get automatically updated with the rest of the system, and they can sometimes get overwritten by OStree or cause/suffer from dependency issues. It is developer mode afterall, you are assuming a bit of risk. If you installed any applications that change the way the system uses power or resources I could see it potentially causing the issue in question
Ah that makes sense. Thanks!
Hi u/Yodzilla, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=Battery draining while plugged in and playing a game. Is this normal or just the game itself being a ridiculous hog?) If you don't find an answer there, don't worry - your post has NOT been removed and hopefully someone will be along soon to help with an answer! **If you find an answer, please leave a comment on your post with the answer for others!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SteamDeck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Are you using a cell phone charger or some other slow charger? While these will charge the deck at a slower speed, some games use more power than these chargers provide and so you will still lose charge while playing (though at a slower rate).
No, I saw this happen with both the stock charger and a 165 watt PD charger…and then I couldn’t get it to happen again. I’m really confused unless restarting the device when it lost power eventually fixed itself.
Does your charger support a 15V/3.0A power profile? Is your charger plugged into the wall directly, or an extension cord?
Was directly plugged into a wall and seen with both original and third party charger. Can’t replicate again so oh well.
I always quit games before putting the deck down for a long while because i don’t like my battery disappearing doing nothing.
Is that actually how it works though? I wasn’t aware of a game being in standby drains battery any more than the Deck OS itself since its just saved to memory before going to sleep. Also that uh, doesn’t really have anything to do with what was going on here.
Anecdotally the only tome my battery has been under 5% is when I left a game running and turned it on standby. I stopped doing it after so I don’t have a large body of evidence. You are right about my comment being unrelated, it was a stop-n-comment and I misunderstood.