Yep, the rumble is weak as hell. It's a thing. I don't really care about rumble so it doesn't bother me, but you'll see lots of Reddit posts with people complaining. There are adjustments for haptic strength (the little vibrations when you click in desktop mode) but none for the rumble. I would guess that they're separate vibration motors.

When you're inside a game, click the Steam button and go the controller settings. Look for the trackpads settings and put haptics intensity at the top value.

You'll notice a big difference, but still don't expect something that feels like a controller with internal rumble.

There's a company called Immersion that owns a lot of patents related to rumble/haptic feedback.

They recently sued Valve saying that the Steam Deck and Valve Index violate their patents and the Valve hasn't paid for a right to use something that infringes on their tech.

If valve didn't pay to license the tech, we can assume that they consider their feedback tech to be different enough from the Immersion patents that it was worth selling without licensing it. The lack of stronger rumble in the deck may be partially an attempt to avoid an additional license fee in a budget priced device.

Glad/sad to see I'm not the only one who's disappointed with the "rumble". Still a beast of a device.

I disabled rumble immediately. Nothing but a shitty and annoying gimmick.