this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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To play devil’s advocate, why does Valve need to bother to make their own controller when there are a number of wired and wireless controllers available for PCs?
Because the Steam Deck is my all-time favorite controller. A controller that’s just like it but without the bulkiness would only make it better
None have additional buttons on the back that can be mapped as new buttons, they're all just rebinding existing buttons. Steam deck is pretty special in that regard. I would REALLY like to have those four extra buttons available for couch PC gaming.
Steam already lets you remap those back buttons on other controllers to anything you want through their interface. Isn't that how you'd do it with a Steam controller?
What other controllers? No other controllers expose back buttons as individually assignable buttons that I'm aware of except Steam Deck and Steam Controller since those use Steam's own interface instead of xinput or dinput
I use a Dual Sense Edge controller with steam and it lets me remap the two back buttons, the two front function buttons, and even the microphone button, to anything I want.
Oh that's good to know! If I didn't have to worry about stick drift I might consider the Dualsense Edge
Well, while this controller doesn't have Hall-effect sensors (which would be ideal), it does have the sticks as separate, inexpensive, easy to replace modules. They can be popped out and replaced without tools.
That's neat, but if they're still prone to stick drift and if they aren't free replacements (looks like $20 apiece, that's a bit insane) then that doesn't really improve the situation
I've been trying to figure out if there is a way to do it with the new 8BitDo Ultimate controller but I don't know that it's possible. I've seen maybe you can switch it to direct input mode somehow to map the paddles but I hadn't had any success.
The only ones i know of are the top end Xbox and PlayStation controllers which are exorbitantly expensive, especially when all you want is extra buttons.
I also have had issues with my standard dualsenses Bluetooth not acting great when using my Bluetooth headphones at the same time (which are also made by Sony)
Because PC controllers these days are nothing but different variants of the same Xbox and Playstation controllers. The Steam controller is different from the rest of them, at least.
Because nobody's making something like the Steam Controller 1, but better, which is what a SC2 would be, one assumes
If someone else were to make one I'm sure people would cream their jeans if they weren't bespoke and expensive
Because they're all shit, each current controller has some kind of downside when wanting to configure it for games.
Either Steam input doesn't recognise extra buttons, or the ones that do have issues with being Bluetooth only.
I've tried the vader 3 which was great, but unrecognised so needed extra software to remap for each game which was never as simple as steam input and required me to use a mouse and keyboard which isn't great with a htpc setup.
And then recently I've tried the horipad for steam, this is almost perfect except for only two back paddles, the face buttons being weirdly shaped so the some of them stick when pressing them and the Bluetooth is shitty.
If steam input allowed the full use of generic controllers instead of ones that have been explicitly set up, I'd have no issues, I'd be able to find the one for me. But because they don't do that, I'm waiting for the steam controller 2 because a full layout just like the steam deck would be the dream.