Even if Valve and Steam is great and overall a blessing for the PC space, I don't like the direction they take with this controller. It only works with Steam, it can't work on a desktop OS without it, despite standard layout. It is a subtle move towards a walled garden.
Windows is designed for gamepads to emulate an Xbox controller. All those Steam Deck competitors are implemented as an Xbox controller with a partial keyboard grafted on. That's why you need Legion Space or Armoury Crate to make them usable - they tell the controller firmware what keybindings to send for those rear paddles.
InputPlumber serves this purpose on Linux. Without it, you just get ABXY, start, select, nav, and shoulder buttons - the same layout that's been on the Xbox forever, because games don't understand the random partial keyboard that shares an internal USB hub with the Xbox pad clone. Thankfully on Linux, you're not stuck with one durable keybinding per paddle - once InputPlumber unifies that USB hub back into a controller, you can map all its buttons per-game with Steam Input. This controller brings that same convenience to Windows too.
It's not that Valve is making a proprietary controller - it's that the Windows gaming ecosystem assumes a proprietary controller, and Valve doesn't conform to that assumption. Instead, they provide a fully featured controller and let you configure it per-game in Steam. Considering Steam is the launcher most people use for most games, that's a totally reasonable tack.
Answering a now-deleted answer regarding PS4 controllers working out of the box on Windows:
PS4 controller support on Windows used to be a huge hassle, because you had to install DS4Windows to make it work. Nowadays, Windows automatically downloads the proprietary drivers to make it work, but I'm not sure if that covers the PS4 controller-specific features such as the touchpad, gyroscope, lightbar or if it enables XInput support. I think the PS4 controller situation supports what OP above is claiming.
But then I would have to install Steam, create an account, have it running in the background. And in case of macOS I would have to install Rosetta as well.
It would be better if they released drivers instead.
The Steam client is free and well-supported on all gaming OSes. It also provides Steam Input, which ensures customization parity with Steam Deck. In Valve's eyes, cross-platform support is already here.
A custom driver could always be made by the community. It feels a little absurd to expect Valve to write and support four different gamepad drivers, when they only need one.
> A custom driver could always be made by the community. It feels a little absurd to expect Valve to write and support four different gamepad drivers, when they only need one.
That is what the entire industry does though. Imagine if you needed an application running in the background for every peripheral you have, for your monitor, for your GPU, for running a hotspot on your smartphone over USB. Imagine having to install a piece of software to access a thumb drive. And that all those applications also needed user accounts. That is the entire point of having drivers.
For complex gamepads, the entire industry most certainly doesn't do that. It's not a class-compliant device, the preexisting OS-level mechanisms for Xinput and DirectInput do not accommodate anything but fight rudimentary fight sticks. The same goes for the original touchpad-based Steam Controller.
Just checked. Still needs it. I don't have Rosetta installed and I don't want to install Rosetta just to be able to use a game controller with DuckStation or Aethersx2. When I can also connect a PS4 controller and not need any of that.
This appears to only be in the Steam beta - the version available for download still requires Rosetta. There doesn't seem to be a direct download for the beta - you have to opt into it after installing Steam.
Windows supports Generic HID game controllers with 8 axis and 128 buttons already. And a few hat switches. And if your devices needs more than that, you can enumerate as multiple devices if needed. Not sure if there is a HID type for rumble support though. So, there's no reason a Steam Controller couldn't operate without a special driver. Some functionality may require custom software to support though. I have several Virpil controls and the entire setup will function as a simple set of generic HID devices. The only special bit is some software you can optionally run to control advance per-application remapping. I don't have a Steam Controller, so I have no idea if it can show up as a generic HID controller or not.
2 thumbsticks is already 4 axes. Add 2 triggers and it's 6 axes. Add gyroscope and it's 9 axes. That's more than 8. And I haven't mentioned the touchpads.
A single physical USB device can enumerate as multiple virtual devices. This lets you easily side-step the limits *if* the game supports input from multiple controllers at the same time. The games I use controllers for allow you to map to multiple controllers, mouse, and keyboard, all at once. The touchpad could simply enumerate as a HID Touchpad. Apparently Windows already has a Touchpad Haptic HID Profile even.
Honestly, if Valve is making you require Steam to fully use the Steam Controller, that's disappointing because, as far as I can tell, nothing it's doing can't be accessed via HID usage.
It's a bit more tricky, a Generic HID just gives you a DirectInput device, while reasonably modern games use Xinput. Microsoft never provided a way to map DirectInput devices to Xinput. For Xinput to work a Microsoft specific USB protocol is needed, not a Generic HID device. Many third party controllers have a switch or button combination to switch between XInput and DirectInput modes for this reason.
Microsoft has a new API with GameInput that addresses this situation and allows mapping Generic HID devices onto game controller via config file, but it doesn't work retroactively, it only works for games that use the new GameInput API.
Valve could of course provide a way to switch and emulate other protocols too, just like other third party vendors do, but there is no USB standard that makes things "just work" in Windows when it comes to gamepads, you always need extra drivers, USB modes or other hacks.
On consoles the situation is even worse, modern consoles deliberately lock out any unlicensed third party controller. Playstation3 was the first and last console that supported standard USB controller, while PS5 doesn't even support PS4 controller.
Most of them I would assume. Everything from 2006 forward started to use Xinput. DirectInput support only shows up in racing sims, flight simulators, fighting games and emulation. But all the big AAA games have been built around Xbox360 style control schemes for two decades.
But it's all a bit theoretical, since most modern gamepads have Xinput support, and the generic HID devices are mostly flightsticks or SNES-style gamepads that wouldn't have enough buttons and axis for modern games in the first place. Another issue is that most games don't offer input remapping for gamepads.
But with SteamInput and homebrew tools like x360ce there are many ways to make generic USB devices compatible Xinput, so it's not like you can't use them. It's just not something that works out of the box.
That may explain it then. I use flight controllers and driving controllers. Both just show up as generic HID devices and both are easily used in the games I play.
If all the games respected HID and Valve did something proprietary, I would understand the skepticism. The truth is that most games are engineered with platform integration (e.g. for achievements, controller mapping, etc.), and fallback to the Xbox API. It's reasonable for Valve to sell a controller that takes full advantage of their platform.
Also, Valve's primary OS is Linux-based. There's surely either already a module upstream in the kernel or one is coming soon. That is: open source software to take full advantage of this controller. That's not the same thing as a walled garden.
Seeing as the original Steam Controllers kernel drivers were community reverse engineered rather than Valve contributed, I don't know if I believe in them to make one for the new one either: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Controller-RE-Kernel
That spliced in USB hub looks messy. Does a new controller necessitate Xinput? I assume Windows still supports DirectInput, which was used in the past with more complex controllers. I'd recently brought up "JOY.CPL" in Windows 10. It would hinge on whether DirectInput can talk to games that expect Xinput.
> It would hinge on whether DirectInput can talk to games that expect Xinput.
As far as I know, nope.
Some games also get really confused if you have Xinput and DirectInput devices plugged in at the same time - for me, Silksong (and unity games in general) don't work if I have a throttle+stick plugged in.
And it's worse than just taking input from the wrong thing, the game can't recognize input from any of throttle, stick, or controller.
Only controller by itself works.
Microsoft has made such a mess of controller I/O that they were kind of forced to go with their jank translation layer made from scratch and running with their main product - it makes sense, especially built up piece by piece
Of course now that they've made controllers work properly, they'll use that work to support their own controller, and in particular enable features like analog triggers + gyro aiming + rumble (xinput can't do these simultaneously), extra buttons (xinput can't do this), and the trackpads (you guessed it).
And it is Windows, because on Linux the controller does work without Steam if you get the right drivers. It doesn't get the full features but it's functional as a gamepad, at least.
For the OG controller on Linux, it was/is possible to use third-party open source software like "sc-controller" to map the pads and rebind things the way Steam does, without needing Steam running.
I don't have any reason to believe that similar projects won't work for the new version.
SDL2 and SDL3 have steam controller support. Also, now that SDL2-Compat is a thing (alongside sdl12-compat), this means literally every game/software that uses SDL 1-3 for controllers on Linux (and windows too) should support the steam controllers.
> Using The Steam Controller Completely Outside Of Steam
> [...] However, at least on the newly released Fedora KDE 44, the system does appear to detect it as a basic gamepad out of the box.
> [...] I installed LIMBO from GOG with GE-Proton and it worked great even with vibration.
More example games are described there as well. A few apparently get confused by the Steam Controller presenting itself as a game controller, a keyboard, and a mouse, but most seem to be fine.
Those tests were done on Linux. I wonder if it's any different on Windows.
On Linux, whenever I connect to my computer without steam running, it will show up as a standard USB HID device. This means, funny enough, I can use the trackpads like a mouse n stuff on my desktop environment.
However, SDL3 (and SDL2 via sdl2-compat and SDL1 via sdl12-compat with sdl2-compat (lol)) supports the steam controller. This means that, without using steam, I get native gyro support and stuff in software like Ryujinb and Citron.
Furthermore, at least on linux, there is sc-controller which is a userland driver that makes the steam controller present itself as a standard Xbox controller. Of course, this means you aren't gonna be able to use the fancy features directly in the game, but it does mean for software that doesn't use SDL and isn't on steam directly, it will act as an FOSS alternative steam input layer. Also, it even has Cemuhook motion server. This mean before SDL3 added gyro support for the steam controller (giving any emulator using SDL3 and SDL2 via sdl2-compat gyro support native), you could have still used gyro controls. Also, with Proton now, I think there is a flag to tell Proton to use SDL input method instead of steam input. I think this means (i have to test it), that you can use SDL to use steam controller with proton outside of steam.
I think on windows, we will see something like sc-controller.
It does work as a keyboard/mouse without Steam. The idea is to have it default to something you can navigate the OS with until you launch steam big picture mode.
The original steam controller had a program to allow users to map the controls without steam, hopefully it will add support for the new one as well.
> It only works with Steam, it can't work on a desktop OS without it
I was very curious about this, No video I saw even said anything about the Steam Software being needed, and is extremely disappointing, on my computer I make a point that I only have steam running if I am playing a steam game. If I am not it is not running and it does not auto start.
Now if it works with steam closed, I am slightly more ok with it but I would love a driver that is not coupled with Steam.
Though I do think it aligns with Valve’s initiatives lately. I don’t think I would go so far as to say walled garden but SteamOS is clearly geared towards using the Steam Store for everything (sure it has desktop mode, but the focus is clear) and their half assed Windows support (despite promises) on the Steam Deck.
Don’t get me wrong, Valve has done a lot of good but I do worry at how quick we are to defend them. I mean I even see people defending their rumored use of AI saying things like “well if there is any company I would trust it would be Valve”. Yeah that won’t backfire.
Edit:
Wait, it won’t even work with a game if it isn’t launched through steam? Are the other comments correct? If that is true, Yeah that is a big nope for me and of course more are not talking about it.
I refuse to let steam or any software run that is not related to my current task.
Why do we criticize Razer for shady practices with their hardware and software but it is fine that Valve did this?
I expect it to work fine without steam. Nobody is going to invest in a completely propriety comms protocol. it will probably be usbHID and a usb keyboard descriptor(or whatever the bluetooth equivalent is). Instruct your usb attach code to attach it as a game pad and it will work fine.
However, the configuration utility for it is part of steam, it is a highly configurable controller, so much so that it could be argued much of it's utility is lost without this configurator.
I don't buy that argument completely, nothing would be stoping them from just not bundling the drivers with Steam and also not requiring that I launch games through steam (if that is true).
While we could argue about the state of Windows, Steam also did not have to engineer it this way and the requirement of launching through Steam feels deliberate.
From what I can find, as others have mentioned, the 8BitDo controllers don't require Steam to be running to work. I presume the PS5 controller likely also does not (I will test this later)
On both macOS and Windows I have used borrowed PS4 and 8BitDo controllers and I can confirm that you do not need a Sony/8BitDo user account or any of their software running in the background for the controller to work.
I only tried one game, but I just tried plugging my PS5 controller into my PC and it worked without needing to install anything in Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and Steam is not running so it isn't Steam Input handling it.
My PC may have installed something on its own, but I did not.
However I don't have an issue if there is a driver, the requirement of Steam running and apparently launching the game through steam is the issue here.
Edit:
I just realized I completely missed the not in your message:
> I can confirm that you do not need a Sony/8BitDo user account or any of their software running in the background for the controller to work.
so I guess my reply was not necessary, I need more coffee...
You don't have to launch games through steam and the controller works fine, just like a normal controller. However if you want to take full advantage of all of the controller's features and be able to remap buttons easily then you can use Steam Input which tries to unify the awful mess that is input device standards across platforms and games.
If you don't want to then there are other options to take full advantage of the features like sc-controller. However this is not as user friendly as using Steam Input.
It's generally a good idea to read and understand before freaking out and getting outraged and spreading FUD.
It's a specific Windows issue too, and not unique to the steam controller. Xinput doesn't work with generic USB controllers, because you know, Microsoft. Hence why you need cope software for Sony controllers.
Valve does deserve criticism for the royal pain certain things are though. For example non-technical users will absolutely struggle to get Proton working without Steam, the process in doing so is purposefully kept undocumented and esoteric. There's 100% a little bit of undesirable obfuscation Valve does to push you towards just using Steam to run their OSS. It's definitely non-Free in the purist sense.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. Operating systems don't typically include drivers out of the box for every single interface that could possibly connect to it. Often you'll get 'generic' drivers on Windows that at least map some of the basic inputs, but up until like late Windows 8 iirc Windows didn't even include that. Previously if you wanted to connect ANY controller to your PC you had to install third party drivers to make that work. So Valve bundling their controller drivers with steam just kinda... makes sense? Are you saying you would prefer to go find the drivers or have them written by not Valve instead? I really don't understand the 'walled garden' take here. You could go build your own drivers for this if you really wanted to, you don't need to use Valve's software.
USB HID protocol has been designed with huge flexibility and self descriptive devices in mind so that in theory you shouldn't require a custom drivers for vast majority of current input devices even controllers order of magnitude more complex than anything currently sells. Just like you don't need a custom driver for each usb flash driver.
In practice half-assed HID drivers by OS, badly designed OS<->application APIs, hardware manufacturers copy pasting HID descriptors from other devices, not following the standard properly, firmware bugs getting fixed with drivers instead of firmware fixes, intentional discrepancies from standard, console manufacturers reinventing the wheel has lead to the current mess.
Where do you see that SteamOS Holo is GPL3? A package is not required to be GPL, and most of SteamOS is a customized arch installation, there's no guarantee that SteamOS itself is GPL. And which repo are you talking about, I don't see it on their gitlab for SteamOS Holo?
As someone else said, the driver is in Steam, not SteamOS. Even on a Steam Deck you have to run Steam in desktop mode to have the buttons on the deck work.
Its been a minute since I've been on desktop mode, but aren't they just a trackpad at that point and none of the button/haptic functionality exists outside of moving the mouse and clicking?
I do wish there was some kind of stand-alone driver for it. But I think part of the problem is also Windows themselves whos gamepad support is a pile of dog crap for anything that isn't a direct xbox controller replacement. Even retro gamepads pretend to be an xbox controller because they know if they don't 90% of games will be broken.
I assume(hope?) it is usb device class HID(or whatever the equivalent is for blootooth devices), this is well understood and there will be SDL/independent drivers for it in a day.
On the one hand Microsoft's Xinput is sort of nice for standard interoperability. On the other it is sort of a crippled specification, woefully inadequate for anything other than a xbox controller, their earlier direct input driver spec(xinput is a shim on top of this) was more capable. but I still don't think it can specify a touchpad.
I'm getting an 8BitDo controller because of the Steam lock-in on the Steam Controller. I can use the 8BitDo on all of my hardware without having to install software. It doesn't have the trackpads but for the rest is a very solid controller and also has Hall effect joysticks.
If you want to utilize all features of an 8BitDo controller at once, you also need Steam. XInput mode means no gyro, no back buttons bindable in software, Switch mode gives you gyro but makes your triggers digital, and you still can't bind the back buttons in software. You're limited to duplicating an existing input via the 8BitDo app and binding it globally at the firmware level. If you use the 8BitDo Pro 2 with Steam in DInput mode, you get analog triggers, gyro, and the back buttons are bindable in software per-game. This was not the case on release, 8BitDo and Valve worked together and gave this improved support via an update.
The software around controllers is universally bad, and Valve is the first to really try to fix it. We need a successor to XInput that is less limited.
It's been driving me crazy seeing all the hate Valve is getting over compatibility concerns when Valve is the only one making controller support on Windows outside of an Xbox controller work. For years I just assumed I couldn't use many of my controllers on Windows, until Steam added the ability to act as the in between and properly handle it. Microsoft has no interest in making anything other than their Xbox controllers work, and everyone suggesting some sort of "I can just buy X as an alternative" has some major caveat that gets conveniently ignored.
The Steam controller doesn't have Hall effect sticks; they're TMR. Also, my 8bitdo controller does need special software to use a couple buttons on it. And it's the cheapest possible model, not a super advanced one. It just has more buttons than xinput supports.
This isn't to say that you're wrong about your main point. Steam is heavyweight to use just as an input profile selector at application launch. But you should be careful about details if you choose to include them.
I can highly recommend Gamesir controllers. I haven't tried all of course, they make a lot of different ones, but generally it's a great brand for very high quality controllers at crap-controller price. Better bang for the buck than 8BitDo (who focus more on style than functionality).
I've no relationship with the brand btw, I'm just a happy customer.
Wait, really? So if you have two copies of the same game, one bought from Steam and the other from Epic Store, Steam Controller will only work for the Steam one?
Just add the launcher to steam, and you can set the input profile for the game just fine.
Better yet if you use Heroic instead of the official Epic launcher, it will let you add the game directly to Steam.
This is basically how people use 3rd party games on the steam deck. You want them added to steam as 3rd party games for easy access in game mode, so you just add any non-steam games to steam. Heroic and other launchers make it pretty effortless, but you can do it manually as well.
It's a bit more complicated than that (on Windows) because Steam doesn't make a virtual gamepad to the OS. The way Steam handles the input is by hooking into the games individually. So to use Steam for other games, you need to add them to Steam as non-steam games.
Even open source controller remapping tools (not just Steam Controller) and similar used ViGEmBus which is no longer maintained. You can have it do mouse/keyboard though, those don't require custom drivers.
Id bet some money it has more to do with certification. Consoles ban 3rd party controllers that provide a competitive edge. Steam controller is exactly that.
I wish people stopped spreading misinformation like this.
No the controller works for any game, outside of steam, without steam launched.
The only restriction is that to configure the controller, you need steam.
Otherwise, you can select a profile for desktop use that is mkb or a generic gamepad, and run your games through that.
Of course, you won't have many of the modern features, since XInput does not support anything fancy. Want these features on your controller (not just the steam one, the 8bitdo, the switch 1/2, etc..) you will need modern input API... which are provided by Steam!
There was and probably will be third party applications to configure the controller outside of Steam.
It is NOT a walled garden at all and imo, the best of both world.
That's how it worked with the original controller, and how it works with the steam deck.
Like I said, it won't have all the modern features as it will be stuck on a MKB profile or a Xbox gamepad profile (or whatever you configure). But it will work
I still use the original steam controller, and I can tell you this is not true. If steam is not launched, the controller runs in a keyboard/mouse emulation mode and is not detected as a controller. This behavior is hardcoded in the firmware and cannot be changed.
Either they changed something, but that's how it worked for the previous controller and how it works on the deck. Haven't received mine to test, but I would be surprised if they nerfed the controller without Steam.
Of course you won't have modern input controls, since you'll be left to either MKB or XInput which lacks gyro and more.
To be frank, it sounds like you are also spreading misinformation. In a follow-up you even said that you have not received yours to test and that you are only assuming based on the previous steam controller.
But your comment here is very definitive and is a major problem at how quick we are to defend Valve when we don't actually know.
Because people are saying the same shit about the previous controller, when it's verifiably false. The new controller operates on exactly the same principles
It has an on-device fallback mode when Steam isn't running, and you can program (from steam) how it appears to the OS in that mode. It was originally developed for people plugging in their own PCs to a TV, so operates as a trackpad by default. Would your preference to be for them to release a Steam Controller programming app on every platform? Push Microsoft to integrate its extended functionality with Windows xinput?
