Steam continues to Hijack Controllers. 4 years later and it's still not fixed

[Squirtle®]

For the last 4 years steam has been hijacking controllers and it is insane to me that this has not yet been fixed.

We can see these issues here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamController/comments/k99agc/steam_now_hijacking_dualsense_cannot_disable/
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/0/5635717345354777526/
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/0/3373782431180700029/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/5241649843390667165/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3464975249570878405/
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/0/4358998752031039271/

and many more links posted over the years

I am currently using a NSO Switch N64 Controller https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/nintendo-64-controller/

I have Project64 launched to play my N64 games in an up-scaled resolution via PC.

The controller works fine. The only issue is that steam hijacks the controller. I have to close steam in order for it to work on Project64 or any other software for that matter.

Is there a way to blacklist or disable a controller on Steam? I play Idle Champions on Steam and would like to leave it running in the background while I play on Project64.

Steam when will you solve this? Give us a disable option or stopping hijacking controller input.

[Kaldaien]

https://github.com/SpecialKO/ValvePlug

Special K can manage this for you. Just need to place that DLL in the Steam client directory and then the entirety of Steam Input can be enabled or disabled using a registry key. SKIF will even restart the Steam client for you.

https://i.imgur.com/y4jWj7M.png

[Squirtle®]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

https://github.com/SpecialKO/ValvePlug

Special K can manage this for you. Just need to place that DLL in the Steam client directory and then the entirety of Steam Input can be enabled or disabled using a registry key. SKIF will even restart the Steam client for you.

https://i.imgur.com/y4jWj7M.png

Wow! Picture me surprised that the legendary Kaldaien has responded to my thread. Truly amazing. Great work on SpecialK, loved it for Nier Automata.

Thanks for posting this Kaldaien. I'll take a look into it.

Can this be done on a selection of controllers or is it more as of disabling steam input as an entirety?

[Squirtle®]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

https://github.com/SpecialKO/ValvePlug

Special K can manage this for you. Just need to place that DLL in the Steam client directory and then the entirety of Steam Input can be enabled or disabled using a registry key. SKIF will even restart the Steam client for you.

https://i.imgur.com/y4jWj7M.png

IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!

Installed Special K FrontEnd and do not see that option to disable steam input: https://i.imgur.com/8x6Yt5R.png

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by Squirtle®:

Can this be done on a selection of controllers or is it more as of disabling steam input as an entirety?

At the moment, it's all or nothing :-\

I could probably implement Vendor ID / Product ID matching, similar to what HIDHide does.

Originally posted by Squirtle®:

IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!

Installed Special K FrontEnd and do not see that option to disable steam input: https://i.imgur.com/8x6Yt5R.png

That's only in the "experimental" version of Special K right now. But that version will be promoted to "stable" over the weekend.

https://sk-data.special-k.info/repository/SpecialK_24.5.10.exe

[Squirtle®]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Originally posted by Squirtle®:

Can this be done on a selection of controllers or is it more as of disabling steam input as an entirety?

At the moment, it's all or nothing :-\

I could probably implement Vendor ID / Product ID matching, similar to what HIDHide does.

Originally posted by Squirtle®:

IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!

Installed Special K FrontEnd and do not see that option to disable steam input: https://i.imgur.com/8x6Yt5R.png

That's only in the "experimental" version of Special K right now. But that version will be promoted to "stable" over the weekend.

https://sk-data.special-k.info/repository/SpecialK_24.5.10.exe

As far as my understanding goes VID/PID is exclusive to USB-Only connected devices. Sure it would be a good implementation for Steams naughty habits.

I originally did try HIDHIDE and it did not work. This led to this post along with a compilation of links to people complaining about the exact same issue in hopes that valve would listen (probably not).

For example the entire library of Nintendo Official Controllers for Retro systems:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/hardware/#p=1&sort=df&f=controllerType&controllerType=Other+controllers
Atari Controllers, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 - All use Bluetooth connectivity. My assumption is that they will not work with HIDHIDE.

Under Device Manager and on the N64 Controller, this is what hardwareID looks like: https://i.imgur.com/PRv6rDY.png - As we can see the naming conventions for the controllers are proper (default).

This is what steam detects it as: https://i.imgur.com/u1MEXqs.png

The VID/PID method would not work with Bluetooth controllers and would need an alternative method. Perhaps, by whitelisting specific BTHENUM\DEVICE_ID_GIVEN from the hardware id section, images provided above.

I have a number of Bluetooth controllers, if you would like to test or remote into my PC to accomplish this task. Just add me up on steam and I would be willing.

Thanks again Kaldaien :)

[Kaldaien]

Thankfully, it's not required to parse the device string to figure out vid and pid.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/ddi/hidsdi/nf-hidsdi-hidd_getattributes

That API works for both USB and Bluetooth.

Special K even spoofs the PID in order to get DualSense Edge controllers working in Unity engine games (USB and Bluetooth), since Unity only recognizes vanilla DualSense controllers. That's a completely artificial limitation -- they use the same protocol -- Edge just uses 5 previously unused bits for the additional buttons.

https://imgur.com/a/MHJX1Vk

Just needs byte swapping

#define SK_HID_VID_SONY              0x054c
#define SK_HID_PID_DUALSENSE_EDGE    0x0df2

[Squirtle®]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Thankfully, it's not required to parse the device string to figure out vid and pid.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/ddi/hidsdi/nf-hidsdi-hidd_getattributes

That API works for both USB and Bluetooth.

Special K even spoofs the PID in order to get DualSense Edge controllers working in Unity engine games (USB and Bluetooth), since Unity only recognizes vanilla DualSense controllers. That's a completely artificial limitation -- they use the same protocol -- Edge just uses 5 previously unused bits for the additional buttons.

https://imgur.com/a/MHJX1Vk

Just needs byte swapping

#define SK_HID_VID_SONY              0x054c
#define SK_HID_PID_DUALSENSE_EDGE    0x0df2

You are absolutely correct. I was mistaken and Bluetooth indeed does have VID/PID.

There are 2 ways to accomplish obtaining of said IDs

Method1:
Do a Test Input as such: https://i.imgur.com/wJaqzCz.png
Result VID/PID Displayed: https://i.imgur.com/mfJioeo.png

Method2:
Start Button (windows button on your computer) > type in "dxdiag" and run it > select input tab
https://i.imgur.com/F4kBC7R.png

[Squirtle®]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Thankfully, it's not required to parse the device string to figure out vid and pid.

Hey Kaldaien, I figured out how to get everything going without disabling your steam input completely and thus selecting specific controllers to blacklist.

Turn off steam COMPLETELY. This is a requirement or your config.vdf will get overwritten.

After turning off steam, navigate to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\config

Inside you will find a config.vdf > open it up with notepad++.
Scroll all the way to the bottom.

Before the very last }, add

"controller_blacklist" "57e/2019"

Save it and now launch Steam.

Stupid that we have to manually hard set this up rather than them providing a GUI Interface to do this for you.

Here is an image visual representation of what this looks like:
https://i.imgur.com/lOGMzO6.png

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I think adding both methods of a vid/pid blocker from steam would be beneficial and perhaps an advanced option to only whitelist that vid/pid to specific games/exe would be beneficial.

I also think adding the controller_blacklist method to your program would also be beneficial. Have steam auto close, modify that file by adding that line before the last } symbol, save, and re-open steam - would be beneficial.

2 methods just in case one does not work for your program.

It would also be nice if this was added to valve_plug as a user such as myself, for example, does not need the entire SpecialK but rather just the controller specific features since Steam wants to be such a pain in the butt.

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I hope I have been of help to you with this post.

[AL2009man]

after years: it appears that Valve finailly introduced the ability to turn off Steam Input *completely* via -nojoy launch command. (this also disables Steam Input API stuffs, consider it a warning.)

As of this writing: this is only available in Steam Client Beta client starting on May 28th 2024.

[Kaldaien]

Thank you Jesus :)

Valve just made an increasingly bitter man less so :P

I am still irritated by the games in my library that require Steam Input and lack a fallback to normal OS input APIs, since the native Steam Input API hasn't worked for years. The Steam client cannot download the controller bindings from the Steam Workshop, so those games only work with keyboard and mouse...

To combat that problem I just buy all of my games from another store. Sucks that Valve won't refund the games I already bought, but it's easy enough to look on the Steam store page, see the broken controller icon that says "Steam Input API" and then... never buy that game on Steam.

[Squirtle®]

Picture me surprised. It took a compilation of links over the years and a tool to be made before it was made apparent that countless of users are affected and probably many returning controllers to figure out that this is affecting countless users.

Thank you for listening!

Thanks Valve

[Squirtle®]

Now that the celebratory post was made, this warrants a separate post. Now that you have added this as launch parameters, the next step is to add this to the gui of the controller menu and add a toggle button.

The next step would be to allow to disable individual controllers from within the controller menu gui. Currently it can be done with my example from post #7 and post #8 to see the full picture. AND this requires a steam client restart. It shouldn't have to be hard coded in via config, it should be as simple as pressing a "Disable this controller" toggle and shouldn't require a restart. This will let the controller off the hook and allow it to be used universally with other apps and programs.

If at first step it will require a restart, that would be fine just to get these settings going. Later, focus on how to get around this.