No, I’m not crazy and I’m not a collector of failed technology either. For the past five years, Steam Controller has been my primary driver for PC games on the couch. I tried the Microsoft controller, DualShock and DualSense, and even the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. None came even close.
Valve shut down the Steam Controller last year. It was widely seen as a commercial failure – which it was, with only 500,000 lifetime units sold. But, more unfairly, it was characterized as a “bad” controller, with reviews criticizing everything from build quality to software, and the process of just making it work.
Part of this is justified.
But the rest is the story of how a bad experience on launch day and impatient reviewers killed what could have been the biggest game-changing paradigm since Sony introduced two analog sticks with the 1997 Dualshock.
A much loved Steam controller – Image: ALensAndSomeLuck
But, what went wrong with the Steam controller? Is it as bad as the initial assessments made it seem? And what does the future hold for the new technologies it has introduced?
You’re using it wrong! The case of the missing gyroscope
- It offers a mediocre gaming experience most of the time – IGN
- Whenever confrontation with a standard Xbox 360 controller, Microsoft’s standard gamepad takes the lead – TechRadar
- Is that what they invented? Wasn’t there really a better way? – PC Gamer
When Steam Controller launched in 2015, reviewers from across the industry criticized it, not only for being difficult to use, but somehow less accurate than a standard controller with dual analog controls.
Going through the initial reviews, a key area stands out because of its omission: in addition to a description of Engadget, hardly anyone who reviewed the Steam Controller at launch seemed to have any idea how the gyroscopic sights work on it.
The gyroscope is central to the Steam control experience
Gyro aiming at the Steam controller is not a Sixaxis-style trick: it works in conjunction with the right touchpad to provide mouse-like accuracy. In almost all initial reviews of the Steam controller, reviewers seemed to use the Steam controller with the gyro disabled, relying only on trackpads.
It is difficult to emphasize this enough: the gyro scope is a critical part of the Steam Controller experience.
In first-person shooter games, users must use trackpads to move their vision in the general direction of a target and then use the gyroscope to aim accurately. By default, the gyroscope is enabled on “touch the right keyboard”. It is only activated when your thumb hits the right button. The trackpads themselves are designed for aiming speed, not accuracy: shaking the right touchpad is intended to place your oscilloscope in the vicinity of a target, much faster than an analog stick. Once you are a few or fewer pixels from your target, the gyroscope kicks in to help you align that headshot.
Reviews, like this one on IGN, lament how difficult it was to aim with the Steam Controller touchpad in games like GTA V. The touchpad is only half of the Steam Controller experience. Using it without the gyroscope sight activated will impair its accuracy.
Quite hilariously, the New York Times declared “after 15 hours of research and testing” that DualShock 4 was the best PC game controller, saying it would not recommend the Steam controller “until Valve releases better hardware” .
Imagine giving a caveman a revolver: he will shoot himself and tell you what a horrible cud it does. This analogy is perhaps the best option for Steam Controller ‘s gyroscopic review disaster on launch day. Not that the Steam Controller was a poor piece of hardware. Valve simply failed to communicate to who it was and how it really worked.
Lack of communication
Gyroscopic sighting is a complete paradigm shift and Valve apparently did not feel the need to educate the public or users about it before the controller was released. And that, of course, is their fault. Take a look at this Steam Big Picture update, a month after the release of Steam Controller:
“One of the biggest discoveries in the community was how well the FPS targeting worked when you combined the input from the trackpad and gyroscope.”
It seems that Valve herself was not fully aware of the importance of the aiming gyroscope, at least at launch. Valve talked about the Steam Controller gyroscope and button / input remap before launch. However, they never seem to have added two plus two until after launch. Community members, presumably disappointed by the low accuracy of the touchpad’s aim, were the ones who later discovered the trackpad + gyroscope combination.
While the YouTube videos of gyroscope and post-launch analytics help with damage control, by the end of 2015 it was too late. Players viewed Steam Controller as a failed piece of hardware and that lack of confidence led to its eventual commercial failure.
Software and compatibility issues: little improvement, too late
When it really works, the Steam Controller is a marvel. The problem, however, is that Valve’s release day firmware and Steam Big Picture software just weren’t mature enough. Over the years, iterative updates and solutions created by the community, such as GloSc, have addressed these issues almost completely.
But at launch, and for at least a year later, the Steam Controller software and compatibility experience were complicated. Doom was the first game I ran on Steam Controller, and it was a perfect experience: the simultaneous control / keyboard worked, as did the vibration. The large image overlay did not fall off, and the swivel-touchpad was smoothly decadent at 100+ FPS.
Almost all other games had some kind of problem: the gyroscope did not work in GTA V, Big Picture Overlay did not appear in some games, others like Fallout 4 did not support simultaneous keyboard / controller input, forcing me to use the uncomfortable option of fallback “mouse-joystick”.
SteamGridDBManager allows continuous support for Steam control in Epic and Uplay games
Many games simply refused to work with the Steam controller. That was in mid-2016, almost a year after the release of Steam Controller. It is painful to imagine what the software experience would have been like on launch day.
I had taken a year off of games and only took my (worn and dusty) Steam Controller out of the closet sometime in late 2018. By that time, the software had matured immensely. As far as real Steam games are concerned, compatibility issues were a thing of the past. Small improvements in quality of life, such as enabling Steam Controller links without having to run Big Picture mode, made for a perfect experience. Getting non-Steam games to work was still a problem: games released through uPlay and Origin were unpredictable and Microsoft Store titles didn’t work.
Fortunately, a multitude of community solutions were now available. SteamGridDBManager adds games from other stores to your Steam collection, without the compatibility issues that arise when using Steam’s “add a non-Steam game” function. And Alia5’s GloSC (Global Steam Controller) enabled Steam Big Picture controller links globally through Windows. This eliminated any remaining compatibility issues and made it possible to play games from the Microsoft Store with ease.
What is the next?
As far as I’m concerned, the way forward now is to track new unopened Steam Controllers on eBay and stock them. My first Steam Controller lasted a good five years, solving the build quality issues raised in many reviews on the launch day. My current and one or two backups should last, at least as long as the controllers themselves are input devices relevant to games.
But in the general scheme of things, the best thing to do would be to look at the impact that the Valve device had on the controller design. Even in 2021, the Steam Controller is ahead of its time. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo removed pages from Valve’s book.
The Switch Pro and DualSense both feature HD touch and precise gyroscope, the Xbox Elite controller has customizable paddles below L2 / R2, the HTC Vive controller has dual trackpads. Valve herself opened the control remap – one of the highlights of the Steam Controller – for all controllers that work on the PC.
The HTC Vive controller has touchpads that strongly resemble those of the Steam controller
Pieces and pieces of the Steam Controller legacy can be found on all modern controllers. When all of this came together on the Steam Controller, it was turned into a villain. As Engadget said, “we hate Valve’s Steam controller because it’s different”.
Less than two million Steam controllers have been sold in the past five years. Even in 2016 – the heyday of the device – Valve reported only 27,000 units in active daily use.
Recent patents indicate that Valve may be working on a new Steam Controller with replaceable components. However, patents do not always turn into products. Waiting for a new Steam Controller can end up being like waiting for Half Life 3. However, there is always hope, and the possibility of seeing more touchpad-based controllers in the coming years.
In the meantime, my Steam controller still has a few more years on it.
Masthead credit: 3dartistav