Steam Controller 2 Not Detected - Black Ops 3

[Chief]

Hi everyone, here is what I've tried to do to get the Steam Controller 2 working in black ops 3. I had it working for a little bit, but upon another reboot of the game, it stopped working... I spent over an hour trying to troubleshoot this, if I missed something obvious please let me know! I tried my own fixes and tried using google/chatgpt to scrape the internet for anything that might help, but I couldn't find anything :(

ISSUE:
Steam Controller 2 is not detected as a controller in Call of Duty: Black Ops III through Steam Input, even though the controller works in Steam Big Picture and in other Steam games (Left 4 Dead 2, for example).

OS:
Windows 11 Pro 25H2

CONTROLLER / HARDWARE:
Steam Controller 2
Connection method: Steam Puck
Steam Client: Stable and Beta, Steam version 1778281814

GAME
Call of Duty: Black Ops III
AppID: 311210

STEPS
1. Connect Steam Controller 2.
2. Open Steam Big Picture and confirm the controller works for navigation.
3. Open Steam Library.
4. Open Call of Duty: Black Ops III > Properties > Controller.
5. Set override to "Enable Steam Input."
6. Apply the default "Gamepad" controller template.
7. Launch Call of Duty: Black Ops III.
8. At the main menu, attempt to use the Steam Controller 2.
9. Open Steam Overlay and confirm the BO3 controller layout is active.
10. Optional comparison: launch Left 4 Dead 2 with the same controller and confirm controller input works there.
11. Optional comparison: launch BO3 with a wireless Xbox 360 controller and confirm BO3 accepts that controller normally.

RESULTS
Black Ops III does not reliably accept input from the Steam Controller 2 as a gamepad. The game falls back to keyboard/mouse input or ignores the Steam Controller 2. Windows joy.cpl does not show the Steam Controller 2 as a native game controller, so BO3 appears to depend on Steam Input’s virtual controller path for this device.

The Steam Controller 2 does work in Steam Big Picture and works in Left 4 Dead 2 through Steam Input. A wireless Xbox 360 controller also works in Black Ops III.

EXPECTED
Steam Input should expose the Steam Controller 2 to Black Ops III as a standard gamepad/XInput-style controller, the same way BO3 accepts an Xbox 360 controller and the same way other Steam games accept the Steam Controller 2.

TROUBLESHOOTING ALREADY TRIED
- Steam Stable and Steam Beta
- BO3 per-game setting: Enable Steam Input
- BO3 per-game setting: Disable Steam Input
- Default Gamepad template
- Gamepad With Joystick Trackpad template
- Gyro disabled
- Trackpad mouse disabled
- Generic, PlayStation, and Nintendo controller support disabled
- Xbox Steam Input enabled
- Re-applied controller layout from Steam Overlay while BO3 was focused/in game
- Launched from Big Picture Mode
- Cleared/renamed BO3 config files
- Confirmed no Player 2 input device is assigned in BO3
- Confirmed Windows joy.cpl shows no native controller device for Steam Controller 2
- Confirmed Steam Controller 2 works in Left 4 Dead 2
- Confirmed wireless Xbox 360 controller works in BO3

NOTES
This did work once previously, but I have not been able to reproduce the working state. The issue appears specific to BO3 receiving Steam Input from the new Steam Controller 2, rather than a general controller failure.

[Xenophobe]

The following works in some single player games where controllers suddenly stopped working, it may work for this game too. Add the following to the game's launch option in steam, right click game icon and select properties.

for linux:

SteamDeck=1 %command%

for windows:

cmd /c "set SteamDeck=1 && start "" /B %command%"

[Chief]

Thanks for the reply, and I gave that a shot (adding it to the launch options), and it does seem to work! only weird thing is now the game starts up minimized for some reason... not sure if there is any way to fix that too? Not too critical if not, but thanks again for the help!

[Xenophobe]

You're quite welcome. The minimized part I'm not sure about ... previously the windows command I knew about was:

cmd /c "set SteamDeck=1 && %command%"

The < start "" /B > part was added to close the command prompt window in the background, I'm not sure if that may cause the game to minimize too ... and as I'm on a Linux OS I can't test that theory.

[Chief]

Hmm, so I did some more testing today, and it seems like this doesn't always allow the game to start properly, unfortunately. Updated testing results:

Tried using cmd /c "set SteamDeck=1 && start "" /B %command%" as a launch option. Worked once or twice, but not reliably/all the time. On immediate relaunch using this launch command, BO3 again failed to detect Steam Controller 2 input.

Also tested:

cmd /c "set SteamDeck=1 && %command%"
cmd /c "set SteamDeck=1 && start "" /wait %command%"

But neither fixed the issue :(

Tried testing consistently with:
- Guide Button Focuses Steam disabled
- Guide Button Chords disabled
- Launching only from Big Picture Mode
- Restarting Steam, powering controller off/on, waiting for detection before launch
- Launching after controller was already on before Steam

No reliable improvement...

Observed behavior:
Sometimes BO3 opens behind the Steam window. Sometimes it opens in the foreground. Even when it opens correctly in the foreground, the Steam Controller 2 may still not be detected by BO3.

[Chief]

What is the next step to elevating this bug, just wait for someone from the valve team to see this or something? Or is there something else I can do?

[Xenophobe]

Not sure if this would be a steam controller issue or a Black Ops 3 issue ... for the controller you can bug report here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/4165870/discussions/1/

Check the game's forum for bug report instructions, many devs seem to prefer discord these days. Good luck.

[Chief]

Gotcha, thanks. I found another thread in the BO3 forum reporting steam controller issues as well, so I'll add to that one. Thanks again Xeno!

[AspectOfAkatosh]

I had about 5 different problems to even get this stupid game working, and now the only way I can play is with the default, offensively bad dead zone setting. Actually, I only got the controller even working at all once. Waste of time.

[Chief]

Just a follow up, I recently updated Steam (today), and tried via both directly plugging into my PC via USB C and also using the bluetooth pairing mode, rather than the puck, and no improvement... so not sure what's going on here :(

I added most of the info from here into another forum post in the BO3 forum as well

[Chief]

🚨🚨UPDATE🚨🚨

I launched the game, powered down my steam controller by holding down the "Steam" button, and turned it back on, while full-screened in BO3, and suddenly the controller input worked...

I repeated this twice after just to double check, first by just quitting and restarting the game in steam big picture mode, then by:

1) quitting steam altogether,
2) restarting steam in normal mode (not big picture),
3) turning my controller on in the normal steam client,
4) launching BO3,
5) not getting input initially but then doing the "controller reboot",


and both methods worked...!

I also did a 3rd launch from the regular steam client, and removed the cmd /c "set SteamDeck=1 && start "" /B %command%" launch command from the game's launch options input, and the controller reboot method at the BO3 home screen still seems to work fine. I have no idea why this seems to work, but I hope:

a) this helps out my fellow gamers and
b) this is something that Valve can patch with the controller,

because I really like the controller, but this is very tedious and annoying to do every time I want to start the game :(

Feel free to respond to this guys if this also works for you, am curious to know.

Valve, plz look into this 🙏🙏🙏

[Kyuren Nakano]

Not sure if this is on topic, but I got the SC2 with Puck to work on BO3. Used big picture mode to open BO3, then when on the START screen, held the power button for 5 seconds and turned off the controller. Then powered it on, then input perfectly like a controller. All works except for the pause button needing to be mapped to ESC.

[Victori0usVic]

This seems to work. You don’t have to be in big picture mode. Simply launch the game and turn off the controller right away before it launches. Once in the game turn the controller on and boom it works

[Chief]

Yeah I've been playing it consistently using this method. Only issue I've noticed is that my controller settings seem to get reset everytime I start the game fresh, which is kind of annoying. If anyone has any tips on preserving steam controller settings across launches, please let me know!