Lars Doucet, developer of Defender's Quest has written up a reddit post requesting Valve to open source the Steam Controller software.
I have to say, I do fully agree with Lars as it would be pretty awesome. It depends on how tied it all is to Steam directly, though. Valve may not have had any plans to do this.
I'm sure people will find a way to argue against it, but it is something worth thinking about. It may end up being something that prevents games from coming to another store.
Valve are getting a pretty good record for working with the community now and helping open source, so it's not outside the realm of possibility for them to actually do this. The question is, will they?
Imagine an open source solution, that would allow you to map controls per-game with a Steam Controller, Xbox One gamepad, Xbox 360, and so on, for all your games regardless of the store you buy it from. That would be something amazing.
As Lars said:
They really don't need to lock it to Steam. If they opened it up, it could not only sell more, but Valve would then be the champions of a modern gamepad configuration that could become a new standard on PC supported across all stores and games. They still have all their other ways of keeping developers on Steam, so it's not like it's a major worry for them.
On Linux we do have the excellent SC Controller project, but it is limited in what it can do in comparison to Valve's own config tools.
You can see the reddit post here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I have to say, I do fully agree with Lars as it would be pretty awesome. It depends on how tied it all is to Steam directly, though. Valve may not have had any plans to do this.
Lars DoucetThe new changes to the Steam Controller are really exciting, but plenty of people have rightly brought up a fear that if developers get lazy and no longer put in conventional controller mapping, the Steam Controller Configurator will essentially become a de facto piece of DRM.
I'm sure people will find a way to argue against it, but it is something worth thinking about. It may end up being something that prevents games from coming to another store.
Valve are getting a pretty good record for working with the community now and helping open source, so it's not outside the realm of possibility for them to actually do this. The question is, will they?
Imagine an open source solution, that would allow you to map controls per-game with a Steam Controller, Xbox One gamepad, Xbox 360, and so on, for all your games regardless of the store you buy it from. That would be something amazing.
As Lars said:
Lars Doucet1. Steam doesn't need lock-in, it's got network effects for that
They really don't need to lock it to Steam. If they opened it up, it could not only sell more, but Valve would then be the champions of a modern gamepad configuration that could become a new standard on PC supported across all stores and games. They still have all their other ways of keeping developers on Steam, so it's not like it's a major worry for them.
On Linux we do have the excellent SC Controller project, but it is limited in what it can do in comparison to Valve's own config tools.
You can see the reddit post here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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