The original Steam Controller is undoubtedly one of the coolest pieces of gear I own—and one of the most innovative, too.
I got mine right when it launched in 2015. I wanted to solve a very real problem: I was trying to turn my PC into a console.
You see, Valve had Big Picture Mode, which truly turned your PC into a console-like experience. The problem was that some of my favorite PC games didn’t support controllers. They were keyboard-and-mouse only.
But then—here comes the Steam Controller. Suddenly, I was able to reprogram all the inputs. I could take basic keys, like the spacebar, and map them to a button on the controller—like the A button. And once you did that, you could share your controller configuration with the Steam community, or reuse a config someone else already made. It was pretty awesome.
And those dual trackpads? They were swank. Incredible for first-person shooters and real-time strategy games. They were the next best thing to a mouse. And because of the angle of the handles, it all felt very comfortable in the hand—probably the most comfortable controller experience I’ve ever had.
It’s funny—just a little over five years ago, gamers hated it. Not because they ever used one, but because it was a failure. And as we all know about gamers, there’s nothing they hate more than a failure. It was dismissed as a novelty—something no one would ever use again.
Well, Valve had the last laugh. A few years ago, they released the Steam Deck. And what do you know? It’s a direct evolution of the Steam Controller. And now everyone loves the Steam Deck.
Just take a look at it—it’s got so many of the same things the Steam Controller had: dual trackpads, back paddles, the ability to remap buttons and customize layouts. Having owned a Steam Deck since launch, I can say this confidently: the most killer features on the Deck originated with the Steam Controller.
That said, it wasn’t perfect. There were a few quirks I wish they had fixed. For one, it would’ve been nice if it had dual analog sticks instead of just one. Using a trackpad in place of a right stick is fine in theory, but let’s be real: a trackpad does not replace an analog stick.
Also, unlike most modern controllers, this one didn’t have a rechargeable battery. You needed AA batteries. Now, to be fair, those batteries lasted a long time—but it still would’ve been nicer to just recharge it and forget about replacements.
Then there’s the back paddles. Only two of them. In hindsight, yeah, Valve knew they needed to evolve. I’ve grown so used to having four back paddles on the Steam Deck. They’re incredibly useful—especially in games with lots of inputs. Just good to have.
Still, this was one of the first mainstream controllers to even have back paddles. So hats off to Valve for that.
Honestly, I really wish there was another Steam Controller on the market. I know Hori makes a licensed controller for the Steam Deck in Japan, but it’s missing a core feature the original had: the dual trackpads.
To me, the dual trackpads make the Steam Deck experience. It’s something almost no other handheld has. My wife has a Legion Go, and it does have a trackpad—but only one. And honestly? That makes all the difference. It’s fine. But man… it would’ve been a better handheld with two.
Definitely one of the most innovative controllers ever made.
And yeah, I still use mine. I use it when I dock my handheld. Or when I’m on my living room PC.
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It’s funny—just a little over five years ago, gamers hated it. Not because they ever used one, but because it was a failure. And as we all know about gamers, there’s nothing they hate more than a failure.
Nice try, but that’s not why I hated it.
This smug revisionism triggers me hard. As a hard core steam fan I loved the idea of the SC, I bought it and really tried to use it, but the reality was just too clunky for primary use. It has no dpad, a single crappy convex analog stick, terribly placed ABXY buttons, horrible shoulder buttons, and just a bit too much input lag on the trackpads. On top all that was (actually, still is) a remapping system that’s way too convoluted to use regularly. There’s also the sad fact that alarmingly many games don’t allow simultaneous gamepad and mouse inputs, and simulating the mouse through right stick inputs feels like shit. I really didn’t find any use case where it’s ergonomically superior to a regular gamepad beside the always cited Civ on the Couch, and I’ve tried with sooo many games.
The deck’s control layout fixes most of the issues – the placement is better (except maybe the Salvador Dali inspired B button but I digress), there is a great d pad, two pretty good analog sticks and the input is snappier. Surprise surprise, the deck is a success.
Was the SC innovative, bold and ahead of its time in many ways? Sure. Was it a good controller to play games with? Hell no.
I bought it and really tried to use it, but the reality was just too clunky for primary use. It has no dpad, a single crappy convex analog stick, terribly placed ABXY buttons, horrible shoulder buttons, and just a bit too much input lag on the trackpads.
Hard truths.
Why did they feel the need to replace analog controls with these weird, inconsistently responsive, difficult to map touch controls when every other console platform had already demonstrated why that’s a bad idea?
Was the SC innovative, bold and ahead of its time in many ways?
NO. It was kitsch and poorly engineered and obviously not play tested sufficiently before release. It was a hobbyist’s attempt at reinventing the mousetrap that got shoved into a major distribution pipeline when Playstation and Nintendo and XBox had already demonstrated why you don’t build controllers this way ten years earlier.
Fully agree. I tried to make the SC work and wrote off a lot of it as “I’m just not used to it”, but it really is asking a lot. In its defence, it was a first run product. The fact that it’s still ass usable and as weird is impressive enough to me. But it’s better as a piece of gaming history than a good product. It was just a good try.
I also agree with the Steam deck controls being actually good. I want the SC2 that’s just a steam deck without the screen or computer.
So I guess the opposite of the steam brick.
I’d gladly pay $100 to have a steam deck like control scheme for my desktop. Rechargeable batteries and a Linux first design would be awesome. I don’t mind just using cables all the time, but I would like better wireless options for Linux gamepads (though to be fair, I haven’t tried connecting a wireless controller to a Linux box in 5 years).
Behold! The perfect controller layout, from the far future:
spoiler
Then there’s the back paddles. Only two of them.
Speak for yourself. Mine has 14 lol
Lol omg no
When your villain origin story is getting banned from a truck simulator mod because you forgot the macro to turn the headlights on.
I prefer AA for controllers actually. Rechargeable AAs are good these days and you can just swap them out. I actually really hate this trend of integrated batteries in things where it isnt necessary. Yeah we need new form factors of replaceable batteries, but the switch from replaceable and standardized to neither is definitely causing problems and costing us money.
I mocked Xbox controllers for years due to them using AA batteries… until I actually started using one with my PC. Now, I wish all controllers used them. It’s vastly more convenient than charging via USB cable.
Trying to find replacement batteries for integrated batteries is a pain too, since might not be able to find an OEM replacement or battery from a reputable brand. So you end up having to go with whatever random no name battery that could be worse than the OEM battery and end up dying after less than a year.
My preference is rechargeable AA or AAA. And even better if the controller itself can recharge the battery like drone controllers.
I got some good rechargeable AA for my controllers about three years ago and will never go back. I have one pair more than controllers and I always have a charged pair read to switch out if needed.
I got 2500mAh batteries from duracell and the charge lasts for days of activity on my xbox controllers. Longer than my PS4 controllers with integrated battery for sure.
I’m still using the same AA eneloops I used since I picked up my Steam Controller all the way back in 2015-2016. And I also used it with my 360 controller too. Just keeps chugging along being good for a month before I need to swap.
Yeah the PS4 battery life has been crap and I don’t know why. Was finally able to replace Sony controllers with 8bitdo now that Steam provides support for the extra buttons to be mapped to unique keys and use analog triggers and gyro together. So been nice not having to spend money on the dualsense, which doesn’t even have hall effects/TMR sticks.
I bought two packs of Eneloops from Dell in 2007 that are still constantly in use. I haven’t noticed any degradation. I can only imagine how many alkaline batteries these things have replaced.
No d-pad is an instant dealbreaker.
Edit: Y’know what I’ll properly expand on this. The Steam Controller failed because it tried to replace vital functionality people expect from a controller. The Steam Deck learned from this mistake and just supplemented that functionality.
TBH, the way I see it, the Steam Controller was designed for games I don’t want to play on controller, while being bad for games I do want to play on controller.
It walked so the Steam Deck could run.
Yeah, but counter point.
It’s got Steam branding.
Another win for the good guys.
Why are Valve the good guys?
I was being sarcastic.
Valve are monopolistic, popularised micro transactions, directly profit from loot boxes and gambling.
If gamers weren’t so brainwashed and Stockholmed syndromed they would realise that.
It’s an outstanding controller for games with mouse input, but it’s less than fantastic for traditional controller games, imo.
It’s also very divisive. I love it for couch Civilization, but I have an 8bitDo for expedition 33.
I really liked it, especially for FPS/TPS
One thing I think it was missing is some kind of native API. It emulated keyboard/mouse or gamepad, or both. And it kind of worked, but sometimes a bit clunky. Like if you tried to use it as mouse for aiming and as gamepad stick game would be confused and switch control hints from gamepad to keyboard/mouse and back.
With native API developers could’ve directly implement it as another type of controller and add things like hints saying “use right trackpad to aim”, tweek controls mapping for it’s layout, sensitivity, etc
Not sure how many developers would’ve supported that though
Prey was great in that department actually having a config that mapped mouse to the right touchpad instead of emulating a joystick like so many games did, and then had different action sets that automatically switched depending on if it was gameplay or you were in the menu. And showed proper icons like the touchpad click to reflect Steam Input mappings people set it to.
Is this the AI slop hyphen use I’ve heard so much about?
Yeah sure, emdashes and curly quotation marks were designed and put into Unicode specially for AI. Take some book or newspaper and look at what characters it uses
This feels written in an AI generated voice as well though
- all the semi-dramatic filler “Well, Valve had the last laugh”, “That said, it wasn’t perfect”, “And honestly?”, etc
- each paragraph has an intro, some content, and a conclusion
- all the punctuation is grammatically correct
Plus, it uses a very generic argument about why everyone else is wrong for not liking the controller, even though from the comments here it’s pretty clear the main reason is not having a d-pad
I wanted to like this thing so bad. I tried it so many times I just cannot get used to the trackpad for anything beyond top down environment or platformers. Once I need a second joystick as an input it was game over.
How did you use the touchpad. My approach has been to adjust the sensitivity of the touchpad until an edge to edge swipe does a 180, and for gyro having a 90 degree rotation of the controller do 675 degree rotation in game for first person and 450 degrees for third person. Made it a consistent aim experience no matter what game I played as long as the mouse input in the game was good and didn’t do things like emulate a joystick causing negative acceleration.
And for the right touchpad I set a dpad modeshift with an inverted outer ring bind so clicking up, down, left, right, center output different inputs so I didn’t have to reach down to the facebuttons as often. And depending on the game I’d set up a chord so holding the left grip and clicking would output a different set of 5 inputs.
And I just saved the template so I didn’t need to set it up all the time.
Liked it for Doom Eternal, since I could activate gyro, swipe the camera to quickly turn, and click to swap between weapons every shot to bypass reloading all on the right touchpad.
And pvp games like The Finals clicking the right pad to switch through gadgets and using the touchpad to quickly turn and activate gyro, and not feeling like my inputs were too slow versus mouse users. And not having to bother with aim assist.
And pvp games like The Finals clicking the right pad to switch through gadgets and using the trackpad to quickly turn and activate gyro, and not feeling like my inputs were too slow versus mouse users. And not having to bother with aim assist.
Mind sharing the setup, please? I’ve played The Finals on my Steam Deck and gave the trackpads+gyro a fair try, but couldn’t land a scheme that made me really comfortable and let me perform well at the same time - lots of unintentional clicks as well as not pressing shoulder buttons to activate the modifier.
Having a trackpad act like a touch-sensitive dpad with gyro felt very close to perfect, though. Just couldn’t tweak the entire scheme well enough.
I uploaded the config for the Steam Controller with the name “Dualpad with Gyro Updated…”
Problem is that if you try to use the config on the Steam Deck I don’t think it’ll work the same way, since on the Steam Deck trackpad click is set up through soft press as opposed to the physical click that the Steam Controller uses.
I did play around with trying to set up something similar in the past on the Deck touchpads and did it through action layers instead of mode shift. Set it up so that clicking the touchpad switched to the action layer where the touchpad was set up as a dpad that I had stuff mapped too, and release press removed the same action layer to return back to the default action set.
https://imgur.com/a/steam-deck-dpad-modeshift-workaround-using-action-layers-b1wyHEK
But, when I did this workaround modeshifts weren’t available in the current UI yet, so maybe a normal dpad modeshift setup would work on the Deck pads now. This was how I set it up in the old Steam Input UI https://youtu.be/4vN1Jj7EPZk. If not then action layer approach is the other method.
Update: so I decided to try it on the Steam Deck and I was able to set up a dpad modeshift on a pad click and even get the chord function to work so the inputs change if I hold one of the left back buttons. Only issue is I couldn’t find a way to adjust the pressure required to register a click for the touchpad when it came to the modeshift pad click.
Thanks for the explanations and demos!
Yeah, I find myself gravitating towards this kind of setup every time I want gyro and (at least) five more buttons on one of the trackpads. Kinda glad to see I’m on something that seems to have some proven record.
Can’t wrap my mind around the difference between modeshifting and action layers, though. The former seems much easier to use, but somehow doesn’t work that consistently for me, so yeah, I end up doing what you’re showing.
Were you yourself ever able to adjust to this kind of scheme on Steam Deck? It seems to be working well for me for some time, but there’s moments when I somehow get lost in the inputs despite knowing them to a degree that I don’t have to think about them at all.
Some games doing a poor job at mixed input doesn’t help either: things like prompts rapidly switching between that of MKB and controller, or the game not allowing you to switch on the fly, etc.
Can’t wrap my mind around the difference between modeshifting and action layers, though. The former seems much easier to use, but somehow doesn’t work that consistently for me, so yeah, I end up doing what you’re showing.
Action Layer
So action layers is like a copy of your default controller config that you can switch to and have the changes you want made to it. Example of how I use this in the Finals is when I play light I have it set up so left touchpad click is dash/grapple compared to the default config I use for medium and heavy where left touchpad click is crouch as opposed a specialization. I switch between my light and medium/heavy controller set by holding down the select button. Action Layer is similar and I’ll use it for temporarily switching between configs. Example is if I hold down the left bumper going to an action layer where my right trackpad is outputting a right joystick to make selecting from the conversation wheel easier and when let go reverts back to the default where right trackpad is a mouse.
Modeshift
Modeshifts are similar but more reliable when it comes to in game actions. So use cases of modeshifts might be having the trackpad when clicked modeshift into a dpad, and it’ll revert back to a regular trackpad afterwards. Or when the left trigger is fully pulled it modeshifts into a different gyro sensitivity that is lower than what the gyro is normally, which comes in useful if a game doesn’t offer aim sensitivity adjustments for ADS.
Chords
Chords are similar to modeshifts and I use them to add on additional functions on top of the modeshift. Like if I have the trackpad modeshift into a dpad on a click with the inputs 1,2,3,4 mapped to it. Then I might set up a chord, so that when the left grip is held and the trackpad is clicked the inputs are 5,6,7,8. Or in some games like the Finals sprinting can take you out of ADS and I bind the sprint button on the outer edge. So I’ll set a chord so that when I am holding down the left trigger to aim the outer edge become an empty bind so I don’t take myself out of aiming by accident. If you find yourself accidentally triggering things on the dpad modeshift you can set up a chord that returns an empty bind to help. Like in the Finals I found myself sometimes accidentally reloading (left click) or meleeing (center click) on the touchpad when I was firing a gun and interrupting it during tense moments, so I set up a chord so that when I am holding down the right trigger the left click which normally outputs reload and center click which is melee turns into an empty bind that outputs nothing.
Were you yourself ever able to adjust to this kind of scheme on Steam Deck?
As for the Steam Deck and fps. I find myself playing more hack and slash and platformers on the Deck, since I haven’t found the touchpads ergonomic for my hands. I’ve found the touchpad experience feels like a downgrade compared to the Steam Controller touchpads, since the location is better on the Steam Controller. I also found the concave circular shape of the steam controller touchpads to be more consistent when it comes to swiping the camera to turn 180 as shown in this demo. With Deck I found I was only able to replicate it adjusting the rotation until it went from corner to corner, but did not find it comfortable. So I stick to joysticks on the Steam Deck.
Some games doing a poor job at mixed input doesn’t help either: things like prompts rapidly switching between that of MKB and controller, or the game not allowing you to switch on the fly, etc.
Yeah that has been an annoyance for a long time. And even worse when there is no mixed input support. When that happens if the game allows sprint and walk to be set to a hold as opposed to a toggle I will use soft presses to set up a pseudo analog experience.
Wow, thanks for such a detailed response! Really helps me see it now. I think I just often used Action Layers instead of Modeshift in many cases, blurring the line between the two in my mind.
Chords sound amazing. When I use the trackpads in The Finals, I often press them in doing certain things (especially on the modifier button layout) and mess things up. Somehow it never occurred to me that I could just disable some actions during specific scenarios. The sheer ability to do that is a long known fact for me, though, so I’m ultra confused as to why I didn’t include that in my config.
Thanks again, it all really helps!
Yeah, chords are very powerful for fixing a lot of issues. Especially for mixed input since some weird things can occur. My favorite fix is for Red Dead Redemption 2 where left stick click when mouse input is detected caused the game to enter Dead Eye. So I solved it by setting up a chord so that when I am touching the right touchpad ‘L3’ becomes ‘Ctrl’, which let me enter crouch without dead eye being activated.
I had a setup for fromsoft games that activated the gyro when I touched the track pad. So I could swipe the pad for fast camera turns and use the gyro for fine aim. My steam controllers battery terminals were both damaged by cell bursts though. I miss the camera agility now.
