Controller not working - In-Home Streaming

[j0shimi]

Hi all,

So for the past year or so I've been using both my XBox 360 controllers with a couple of friends to play games on my laptop as a client, streaming games from my host PC via Steam In-Home Streaming.

Yesterday I tried plugging my Steam controller in as I've not used it for a while and didn't get on with it too well for the games I was playing so decided to swap back to my XBox controller... which no longer works in games.

The controller works in the Big Picture menu's but will not work in any streamed games whatsoever. It works on the host PC absolutely fine but has completely stopped working in games on the client laptop for no reason whatsoever except that I plugged in my steam controller before hand?

Has anyone got any idea what I can do, is there any controller settings files I can delete from my host Steam folder? I've tried on another laptop and that won't accept the XBox controller either so I'm certain something has changed within the Host steam setup?

FIX: Opt out of Steam Beta on both Host and Client machines.

[that guy]

Definitely sounds consistent with my issue. I still haven't figured out a solution.

[FuriousDCD]

Hey guys,

So I had been having a similar issue when trying to play Project Cars 2 with in home streaming using an xbox one controller. Through trial and error, I did manage a simple solution that worked for me. Not sure if it will work for you or not, but worth trying if all else fails.

On the HOST computer, plug in an xbox one controller (even though it won't be used). Run Steam in Big Picture Mode.

On the CLIENT computer, you can run Steam in either Big Picture Mode or normal - doesn't seem to matter. Plug in another xbox one controller to the CLIENT machine. Play game. Works for other games too, not just PC2.

Seems the issue is with Steam and the key is having a controller plugged into the HOST machine so the client can be configured properly. A simple fix but it worked - finally.

[A-Jey]

I got it working too, but I didn't need a second controller like described in the comment above mine.

I started Big Picture mode on HOST, plugged in the controller.
Then started the stream on CLIENT.

After the game has started I plugged off the controller from the HOST and plugged it into CLIENT.

It works for me.

[that guy]

Thanks for the input everyone. A-Jey that works for me! I think the key might be putting the host into bg picture mode as I wasn't doing that before.

[Rambo]

Hi all,

Posting this because i just spent the last 4 hours trying to solve my issues with the Xbox controller not passing inputs through in home streaming to my game.

The issue:
certain games would work perfectly with the Xbox controller (like Rocket League, Divinity Original Sin and Overcooked) and others simply wouldn't work at all (like Cuphead and Moon hunters)
even though they have full controller support

I knew it wasn't the controller on the client PC, as it was recognized by BPM and would even pull up the steam overlay once in game, It seemed like the input wasn't being passed to the game program. Keyboard Input worked wonderfully all the time.

I figured out purely by accident (in frustration I was mashing buttons on my controller) that the window name (on the Host PC) was labeled as a MSI afterburner window, and that didn't make any sense to me.
So I tried disabling MSI afterburner and the RivaTuner Statistics Server on the Host PC.
BOOM! problem gone - but I like using Riva and MSI for temp monitoring, and FPS counter.

The conflict reminded me of a similar issue I had with CS:GO and Rocket League in regards to a conflict between Riva and the steam overlay, ultimately I changed how Riva hooked into the games themselves.

This got the gears turning, I did some digging and found the encoding for in home streaming is done by the "Steam Client Bootstrapper"
This is essentially part of Steam.exe. So I simply added Steam.exe to the application profile properties and set the application detection level to none.
now all my Xbox 360 and Xbox one controllers work with all the previously afflicted games.
No silly plugging in and unplugging of controllers, as suggested by others.
Hope this helps someone save some time.

TLDR; - I use RivaTuner Statistics Server, I added steam.exe to the list of custom profiles, and disabled application detection on the Host PC.
Now all my games work wonderfully.

[Jack Schitt]

In Big Picture mode have you gone in to the main settings for Controllers and turned the Xbox controller option on? You didn't mention if you did that or not and that may be it...?
I'm thinking that when you plugged the steam controller in the client automatically switched all of the settings to it and turned off / made a mess (possibly deleted?) the xbox controller settings.

[Rambo]

Jack,
I did. I tried every mentioned solution in this thread.
Unchecking all the controller boxes, checking the ones for the 360 controller/ generic controller on both the client and host pc, and enabling controller settings per game too, and in In all possible combinations.
Making sure I was not using beta steam / using beta steam
As I said I spent 4 hours on this, what worked was turning off application detection in rivatuner for steam.