this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
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Steam Hardware
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A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.
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Unlike popular console controllers, which have games designed specifically for them, the Steam Controller was created to play games originally made for mouse and keyboard, not a controller.
The goal was to have a single controller that lets you play your entire Steam library. So it has all the buttons and axes expected by XInput-based games, but compared to the other controllers it sacrifices simplicity in favor of flexibility. It has four additional buttons on the back and dual trackpads on the front, which makes it considerably larger.
I think if you had the back buttons act as modifiers changing input layers, you could play a MMORPG with this which requires you to have 20 abilities on hotkeys. I haven't looked into Steam Input in years, though.
Steam input is insanely powerful, and just a bit confusing. But, Valve was smart and layered on public sharing of profiles PER GAME and when you look for community profiles for a game, it shows you their popularity and age.
More dedicated buttons is always the correct second choice to proper game input design, but having a custom Steam input layer will make up for almost anything you wanted to ever throw at it; you could control an mmo with a wiimote if you were daring enough.