I'm starting to hate Steam Controller support

[BlazeHedgehog]

You know what was a great about Microsoft standardizing Xbox 360 controller support in PC games? You could just plug the controller in and it would work. You could buy console games, on the PC, and even if they had control schemes that weren't friendly for keyboard and mouse, you could just connect your controller, it would automatically set you up with the console keybinds, and you could play. No muss, no fuss.

Across four games now I have connected my controller only to have Steam Controller support pick it up and ruin everything.

My old 360 controller was... well, it was old, obviously. I bought it in like 2011. The sticks are very loose. Thinking it over, I preferred the Dualshock's d-pad over the 360 d-pad, so I ended up getting a Dualshock 4 about a year and a half ago. Not long after, Steam added official support for the Dualshock 4.

The issue, as I see it, is there is no quality control. There's no certification process for these games to go through where somebody has to carefully evaluate the user experience in order to make sure things are logical and functional. Developers can enable whatever weird controller config they think is best on a whim.

And I don't mean small indie developers, either.

Let's start with Grow Home, an Ubisoft game. Connecting my Dualshock 4 to play that game, it downloaded an official Ubisoft controller config that put camera control on my DS4's gyroscope, so that any small twitch of the controller makes BUD act like he's tweaked out on heroin. Does it do that on the actual Playstation 4 version? Nope! There are no gyro controls in the console version of Grow Home at all! But somebody at Ubisoft thought the PC version should do that.

The exact same thing happened with The Talos Principal. And once again, gyroscope camera control was part of the official controller configuration provided by the developer, Croteam. And yet again, gyroscope control was NOT in the Playstation 4 version.

Or how about when games have "classic"-style 360 controller support that then switch over to having Steam Controller support?

This happened in American Truck Simulator. The initial Dualshock 4 support for Steam just made the controller appear like an Xbox 360 controller. I configured all of my buttons the way I wanted them, played about four hours of the game, and then had to put it down for a few months. I came back to American Truck Simulator to my controls being COMPLETELY DIFFERENT through no modification of my own -- Steam Controller Support had downloaded an official ATS config that changed everything about the way the controls worked, making them almost totally opposite of what the original Xbox 360 controller configuration was.

And it just happened again in Left 4 Dead 2. My wrist was starting to feel tight (I'm an artist), and sometimes a controller ends up more comfortable than a mouse. L4D2 had an Xbox 360 port, the PC version had pretty standard Xbox 360 controller support, so I figured I'd just turn on the game's gamepad mode and everything would be fine. It downloaded Valve's official Steam Controller support, which not only is completely different from the original Xbox 360 controller binds, but also enables gyro control.

Worse still, Valve's new Steam Controller support for Left 4 Dead 2 is actually visibly worse than the Xbox 360 binds, because now I can't issue voice commands -- the option to view the voice command radials are straight up missing from the Steam Controller configuration menu.

What was once a simple plug-and-play act now almost always means spending upwards of 15, 20, maybe even 30 minutes or more undoing whatever stupid, ill-conceived, niche controller config the Steam Controller system pulls out of the cloud, and I hate it. All I want to do is play a game, not clean up somebody else's mess!

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

You may have already notice, Xbox controllers are the most common controller to use, the issue is that the other controllers have to mimic, or emulate as a Xbox controller due to drivers to be detected by the game, as it most likely the game wouldn't be able to tell.

For some games devs would've set it up to have it call for Xbox controller only, which none of the other controllers wouldn't work properly, or at all.

For some games if it does support third party controllers, it should be able to pick up a large range of controllers, as long it using the stander inputs, that the game able to register them to call out to it.

Steam added support is basically mimic, or emulate the controllers as Xbox inputs.

There's few games that can pick up Sony controllers as they were added by the game devs into their games. Such as final fantasy 12.

[BlazeHedgehog]

Originally posted by Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

You may have already notice, Xbox controllers are the most common controller to use, the issue is that the other controllers have to mimic, or emulate as a Xbox controller due to drivers to be detected by the game, as it most likely the game wouldn't be able to tell.

For some games devs would've set it up to have it call for Xbox controller only, which none of the other controllers wouldn't work properly, or at all.

For some games if it does support third party controllers, it should be able to pick up a large range of controllers, as long it using the stander inputs, that the game able to register them to call out to it.

Steam added support is basically mimic, or emulate the controllers as Xbox inputs.

There's few games that can pick up Sony controllers as they were added by the game devs into their games. Such as final fantasy 12.

Oh, no, I'm well aware how all this works. When I first got my Dualshock 4, I was using DS4Windows, which did the same thing (hid my DS4 and made it appear as a 360 controller to games).

Now Steam yells at me if I have DS4Windows open when I try to launch games with native Steam Controller support, so I decided to just switch fully to Steam's implementation.

Except that now you get situations like I described, where games had perfectly functional Xbox controller support, that then get a special custom Steam Controller configuration that's COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the way the Xbox controller works.

The way I ended up fixing American Truck Simulator was to go in to the Steam Controller config and unbinding all of the buttons (which were remapped to keyboard keys) and setting them back to Xbox 360 buttons.

But you can't always do that in all games, like in Left 4 Dead 2, where Xbox buttons aren't even available in the configurator.

It's infuriating.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

I can understand, sometimes it's the most inconvenient issue to deal with, which in my case I bought extra wired PC version Xbox360 controller before stores stop selling them. You could get the wireless Xbox360 dongle, and pair it with the wireless Xbox360 controller, or try the Xbox one controller as it can pair with bluetooth, or wired by usb.

But I assume you like the PlayStation controller due to more to your liking, or fits your hands well compare to the Xbox controllers. Best I can suggest and I know not what you want to hear, but to post in the game forum to see if anyone else knows a fix to your issue, or checking the game guide to see if anyone made one.

[Supafly]

Just one reason why I still use DS4Windows. I have no issue with it and have been used to the XBox, ABXY, prompts for years. My DS3 is still using and works perfectly well with ScpToolkit and my DS4 DS4Windows

@BlazeHedgeHog with Steam and DS4Windows closed Remove your DS4 controller via windows devices. Load DS4Windows and repair the DS4 with it. Make sure Hide DS4 is selected. From now on load DS4Windows before you load Steam and your DS4 should work fine without Steam trying to steal access to it. You don't need to have a DS4 turned on before loading Steam, DS4Window only needs to be loaded first. I disconnect a,d reconnect my DS4 all the time while Steam and DS4windows are running and never have an issue unless I try loading DS4Windows while Steam is running.

[BlazeHedgehog]

Originally posted by Suicidal Monkey:

Just one reason why I still use DS4Windows. I have no issue with it and have been used to the XBox, ABXY, prompts for years. My DS3 is still using and works perfectly well with ScpToolkit and my DS4 DS4Windows

@BlazeHedgeHog with Steam and DS4Windows closed Remove your DS4 controller via windows devices. Load DS4Windows and repair the DS4 with it. Make sure Hide DS4 is selected. From now on load DS4Windows before you load Steam and your DS4 should work fine without Steam trying to steal access to it. You don't need to have a DS4 turned on before loading Steam, DS4Window only needs to be loaded first. I disconnect a,d reconnect my DS4 all the time while Steam and DS4windows are running and never have an issue unless I try loading DS4Windows while Steam is running.

Loading DS4Windows before Steam is such a hassle, though. Even when I have DS4Win set to load as a task and not a program, Steam still launches first, even though Steam launches INCREDIBLY slowly.

And setting all of this up manually is such a pain.

[AL2009man]

Originally posted by BlazeHedgehog:

And it just happened again in Left 4 Dead 2. My wrist was starting to feel tight (I'm an artist), and sometimes a controller ends up more comfortable than a mouse. L4D2 had an Xbox 360 port, the PC version had pretty standard Xbox 360 controller support, so I figured I'd just turn on the game's gamepad mode and everything would be fine. It downloaded Valve's official Steam Controller support, which not only is completely different from the original Xbox 360 controller binds, but also enables gyro control.

Worse still, Valve's new Steam Controller support for Left 4 Dead 2 is actually visibly worse than the Xbox 360 binds, because now I can't issue voice commands -- the option to view the voice command radials are straight up missing from the Steam Controller configuration menu.

Two years later, Valve overhauled the entire Controller Support system as part of The Last Stand update, fixing parts of the problem you have.

Such as:

1. The Controller Layout is closer to Xbox 360 Layout.
2. Aside of Glyphs/Icons, Valve added proper DualShock 4, Nintendo Switch Pro Controller and Xbox One Controller Configs.
3. New Game Actions such as "Camera (Joystick)", "Quick Menu Vocalizers" (the one you want is close, but you can simply rebind XInput Left Stick Click no problem.) and "Reset Camera" has been added.
4. Minor Fixes/Quality of life changes.

For a DualShock 4 specifically, Gyro Aiming is enabled by default and the Joystick-like Camera doesn't jive well since that specific Game Action is tied to In-Game Joystick Camera Settings...

Granted, Source Engine gamed isn't generally good at handling Joystick Camera Aiming, but you can switch to Mouse-like Camera ("Camera (Mouse)") or disable Gyro Aiming altogether.

While the "Steam Controller support" has expanded and newer games started to understand how to properly do a Layout for a specific controller, you still have to customize the config to your desire or use Community Configs, even if the general Steam Input implementation is bad (looking at you, Horizon Zero Danw!)

Otherwise, enjoy the pain of "Developers don't know how to implement, even Valve themselves" Steam Input era.