I'm not sure that's Valve's fault.

Windows is designed for gamepads to emulate an Xbox controller. All those Steam Deck competitors are implemented as an Xbox controller with a partial keyboard grafted on. That's why you need Legion Space or Armoury Crate to make them usable - they tell the controller firmware what keybindings to send for those rear paddles.

InputPlumber serves this purpose on Linux. Without it, you just get ABXY, start, select, nav, and shoulder buttons - the same layout that's been on the Xbox forever, because games don't understand the random partial keyboard that shares an internal USB hub with the Xbox pad clone. Thankfully on Linux, you're not stuck with one durable keybinding per paddle - once InputPlumber unifies that USB hub back into a controller, you can map all its buttons per-game with Steam Input. This controller brings that same convenience to Windows too.

It's not that Valve is making a proprietary controller - it's that the Windows gaming ecosystem assumes a proprietary controller, and Valve doesn't conform to that assumption. Instead, they provide a fully featured controller and let you configure it per-game in Steam. Considering Steam is the launcher most people use for most games, that's a totally reasonable tack.

Microsoft has made such a mess of controller I/O that they were kind of forced to go with their jank translation layer made from scratch and running with their main product - it makes sense, especially built up piece by piece

Of course now that they've made controllers work properly, they'll use that work to support their own controller, and in particular enable features like analog triggers + gyro aiming + rumble (xinput can't do these simultaneously), extra buttons (xinput can't do this), and the trackpads (you guessed it).

And it is Windows, because on Linux the controller does work without Steam if you get the right drivers. It doesn't get the full features but it's functional as a gamepad, at least.

> It only works with Steam, it can't work on a desktop OS without it, despite standard layout.

This review says otherwise:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/05/the-new-steam-controll...

> Using The Steam Controller Completely Outside Of Steam

> [...] However, at least on the newly released Fedora KDE 44, the system does appear to detect it as a basic gamepad out of the box.

> [...] I installed LIMBO from GOG with GE-Proton and it worked great even with vibration.

More example games are described there as well. A few apparently get confused by the Steam Controller presenting itself as a game controller, a keyboard, and a mouse, but most seem to be fine.

Those tests were done on Linux. I wonder if it's any different on Windows.

> It only works with Steam, it can't work on a desktop OS without it

I was very curious about this, No video I saw even said anything about the Steam Software being needed, and is extremely disappointing, on my computer I make a point that I only have steam running if I am playing a steam game. If I am not it is not running and it does not auto start.

Now if it works with steam closed, I am slightly more ok with it but I would love a driver that is not coupled with Steam.

Though I do think it aligns with Valve’s initiatives lately. I don’t think I would go so far as to say walled garden but SteamOS is clearly geared towards using the Steam Store for everything (sure it has desktop mode, but the focus is clear) and their half assed Windows support (despite promises) on the Steam Deck.

Don’t get me wrong, Valve has done a lot of good but I do worry at how quick we are to defend them. I mean I even see people defending their rumored use of AI saying things like “well if there is any company I would trust it would be Valve”. Yeah that won’t backfire.

Edit:

Wait, it won’t even work with a game if it isn’t launched through steam? Are the other comments correct? If that is true, Yeah that is a big nope for me and of course more are not talking about it.

I refuse to let steam or any software run that is not related to my current task.

Why do we criticize Razer for shady practices with their hardware and software but it is fine that Valve did this?

It does work as a keyboard/mouse without Steam. The idea is to have it default to something you can navigate the OS with until you launch steam big picture mode.

The original steam controller had a program to allow users to map the controls without steam, hopefully it will add support for the new one as well.

I have an OG Steam controller.

On Linux, whenever I connect to my computer without steam running, it will show up as a standard USB HID device. This means, funny enough, I can use the trackpads like a mouse n stuff on my desktop environment.

However, SDL3 (and SDL2 via sdl2-compat and SDL1 via sdl12-compat with sdl2-compat (lol)) supports the steam controller. This means that, without using steam, I get native gyro support and stuff in software like Ryujinb and Citron.

Furthermore, at least on linux, there is sc-controller which is a userland driver that makes the steam controller present itself as a standard Xbox controller. Of course, this means you aren't gonna be able to use the fancy features directly in the game, but it does mean for software that doesn't use SDL and isn't on steam directly, it will act as an FOSS alternative steam input layer. Also, it even has Cemuhook motion server. This mean before SDL3 added gyro support for the steam controller (giving any emulator using SDL3 and SDL2 via sdl2-compat gyro support native), you could have still used gyro controls. Also, with Proton now, I think there is a flag to tell Proton to use SDL input method instead of steam input. I think this means (i have to test it), that you can use SDL to use steam controller with proton outside of steam.

I think on windows, we will see something like sc-controller.

Yeah it'd be great if they can embed the steam input layer and have it run on other consoles, but there's too much overlay to disentangle.

I do wish there was some kind of stand-alone driver for it. But I think part of the problem is also Windows themselves whos gamepad support is a pile of dog crap for anything that isn't a direct xbox controller replacement. Even retro gamepads pretend to be an xbox controller because they know if they don't 90% of games will be broken.

Kinda. SteamOS is open source, so it's not really walled.

It's possible they deferred making generic drivers to release faster and those will come out later,kinda like steamOS windows drivers came out later

How custom is it?

I assume(hope?) it is usb device class HID(or whatever the equivalent is for blootooth devices), this is well understood and there will be SDL/independent drivers for it in a day.

On the one hand Microsoft's Xinput is sort of nice for standard interoperability. On the other it is sort of a crippled specification, woefully inadequate for anything other than a xbox controller, their earlier direct input driver spec(xinput is a shim on top of this) was more capable. but I still don't think it can specify a touchpad.

I wish people stopped spreading misinformation like this.

No the controller works for any game, outside of steam, without steam launched.

The only restriction is that to configure the controller, you need steam.

Otherwise, you can select a profile for desktop use that is mkb or a generic gamepad, and run your games through that. Of course, you won't have many of the modern features, since XInput does not support anything fancy. Want these features on your controller (not just the steam one, the 8bitdo, the switch 1/2, etc..) you will need modern input API... which are provided by Steam!

There was and probably will be third party applications to configure the controller outside of Steam. It is NOT a walled garden at all and imo, the best of both world.

It's features work fine without Steam on Linux.

I'm not sure what you mean, it works outside of Steam. For example, SDL has full steam controller support.

I'm getting an 8BitDo controller because of the Steam lock-in on the Steam Controller. I can use the 8BitDo on all of my hardware without having to install software. It doesn't have the trackpads but for the rest is a very solid controller and also has Hall effect joysticks.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. Operating systems don't typically include drivers out of the box for every single interface that could possibly connect to it. Often you'll get 'generic' drivers on Windows that at least map some of the basic inputs, but up until like late Windows 8 iirc Windows didn't even include that. Previously if you wanted to connect ANY controller to your PC you had to install third party drivers to make that work. So Valve bundling their controller drivers with steam just kinda... makes sense? Are you saying you would prefer to go find the drivers or have them written by not Valve instead? I really don't understand the 'walled garden' take here. You could go build your own drivers for this if you really wanted to, you don't need to use Valve's software.

Wait, really? So if you have two copies of the same game, one bought from Steam and the other from Epic Store, Steam Controller will only work for the Steam one?

For now. Valve has a long history of shipping compatibility after release.

Id bet some money it has more to do with certification. Consoles ban 3rd party controllers that provide a competitive edge. Steam controller is exactly that.

> It only works with Steam, it can't work on a desktop OS without

Wait what?? Is this true? How did I not know this important detail?

It has an on-device fallback mode when Steam isn't running, and you can program (from steam) how it appears to the OS in that mode. It was originally developed for people plugging in their own PCs to a TV, so operates as a trackpad by default. Would your preference to be for them to release a Steam Controller programming app on every platform? Push Microsoft to integrate its extended functionality with Windows xinput?