Configuring Minecraft to work with the steam controller

[Kinomora]

So I spent all day yesterday trying to get my controller to work with my non-steam added game, minecraft. And as all minecraft fans know, since 1.5 we've had to use the launcher to actually get into the game. This causes a conflict between steam and the actual game of minecraft since it closes the launcher and opens in a new window.
So I spent a few hours trying to figure out if I could use a batch file to launch minecraft, add that to steam, and work from there, adding javaw.exe with extra paramaters pointing towards my minecraft.jar to steam, among other things. All of these ended in frustration and none worked- simply, you would have the configured controllers in the LAUNCHER but as soon as you started the game, it would revery the controller back to default settings, which does not include a WSAD format to move with, nor many other controls you need to play with.
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Since then, I've discovered the stupidest, easiest solution to this problem:
Open up the launcher (either from steam or from your .exe file) and select your regular minecraft profile from the dropdown (most likely you'll already have it selected, you'll have to do this for every profile that you'll want to use with the controller) and then select "edit profile".
This will bring you to the profile editor GUI and all you simply need to do is under the first section, select "Launcher Visibility" and chose "Keep launcher open". This will force steam to think you're playing the launcher "game" after you launch the real Minecraft instance and allow you to use configurable controls in-game.
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The only downside to this is that the steam overlay doesn't work and in order to reconfigure your controls (I had to at least 7 times to get it how I liked) you need to pause the game, open steam in big picture mode, go to the added minecraft game, open the controler configurator, and change it there, THEN quit big picture mode and return to the game. Every. Time.
If someone has a better solution to this, feel free to let me known, but I figured I'd go ahead and post this since I couldn't find anything on the internet about how to do this yet.

TL;DR: Set launcher visibility to "Keep launcher open" to use customly configured mapping.

[Sp-4ce]

Try reinstall Steam or run in admin mode, update java ...

normally it should work just fine even with launchers.
first steam shows the popup in the launcher window and when the game starts it shows the popup in the actual game window.

[FatStupidAmericant]

I actually got it to work on the first try

[Hit-Bit]

I had no issues with Minecraft, one of the first games I tried with the Steam Controller.
Just added the game as a non steam game, launched it from big picture mode and configured everything from within the game by hitting the Steam button. This is on Windows 10.

[Harry]

I set it to "hide launcher and reopen when game closes" and that allowed me to use my profile and the steam overlay correctly without any problem. Tanks for the idea!

[landman]

Works perfectly for me

[LadGaga]

The overlay didn't seem to work when I first tried running Minecraft from Steam. But now it does.

Which bodes well I suppose for me purchasing the Steam Controller soon.

[Biteme™]

Originally posted by Kinomora:

So I spent all day yesterday trying to get my controller to work with my non-steam added game, minecraft. And as all minecraft fans know, since 1.5 we've had to use the launcher to actually get into the game. This causes a conflict between steam and the actual game of minecraft since it closes the launcher and opens in a new window.
So I spent a few hours trying to figure out if I could use a batch file to launch minecraft, add that to steam, and work from there, adding javaw.exe with extra paramaters pointing towards my minecraft.jar to steam, among other things. All of these ended in frustration and none worked- simply, you would have the configured controllers in the LAUNCHER but as soon as you started the game, it would revery the controller back to default settings, which does not include a WSAD format to move with, nor many other controls you need to play with.
------
Since then, I've discovered the stupidest, easiest solution to this problem:
Open up the launcher (either from steam or from your .exe file) and select your regular minecraft profile from the dropdown (most likely you'll already have it selected, you'll have to do this for every profile that you'll want to use with the controller) and then select "edit profile".
This will bring you to the profile editor GUI and all you simply need to do is under the first section, select "Launcher Visibility" and chose "Keep launcher open". This will force steam to think you're playing the launcher "game" after you launch the real Minecraft instance and allow you to use configurable controls in-game.
------
The only downside to this is that the steam overlay doesn't work and in order to reconfigure your controls (I had to at least 7 times to get it how I liked) you need to pause the game, open steam in big picture mode, go to the added minecraft game, open the controler configurator, and change it there, THEN quit big picture mode and return to the game. Every. Time.
If someone has a better solution to this, feel free to let me known, but I figured I'd go ahead and post this since I couldn't find anything on the internet about how to do this yet.

TL;DR: Set launcher visibility to "Keep launcher open" to use customly configured mapping.

actually did the same for everygame that i have on steam except Tom raider. do you think it'll work with the new launcher?

[Grottenolm]

I tried to get it to work via the described method today, but the 1.12.1 launcher seems to behave differently. Or I am doing something really wrong. The controller works when the launcher is the active window, but as soon as the real game takes over the coontroller doesnt work anymore, even if the launcher is still open in the background.

EDIT: I got it working. I feel dumb now. Just needed to allow the overlay in Steam BPM settings.

[Photogenick]

Originally posted by Grottenolm:

I tried to get it to work via the described method today, but the 1.12.1 launcher seems to behave differently. Or I am doing something really wrong. The controller works when the launcher is the active window, but as soon as the real game takes over the coontroller doesnt work anymore, even if the launcher is still open in the background.

EDIT: I got it working. I feel dumb now. Just needed to allow the overlay in Steam BPM settings.

I am actually having the same exact issue. If you remember, could you tell me exactly what you did to fix it?