Valve have released some interesting statistics about controller use

Most of the games I use a controller for need a right thumb-stick and I never got used to the haptic touchpad thingy on my steam controller. Despite its comfort and cool-factor, I went back to my wired Xbox360 controller. It tends to work "out of the box" for more games too, whereas the SC usually needed a community set up to get it working.

Well, it have significant flaw here. Some cheap non-brand (sometimes faked) controller are emulating/using/tricking as Xbox 360 drivers to work on Windows instead "others".

Also, just avoid reading steamcommunity comments. As usual.

If you're not looking at the percentages, I'd say 1.5 million sales of the Steam Controller makes it quite a bit of a success in terms of raw sales. Judging from the stats, it has more units registered than Logitech and similar ones.

If they release a second iteration with some improvements, they could probably be up there with the PS3 or higher.

They should maybe lower the price too. Controllers are quite pricey and the stats in general seem to show that people are just using their existing controllers from their respective consoles on PC rather than buying something specific. If they could make a cheaper wired option then more people would probably be tempted to buy the Steam Controller specifically for PC gaming.

I primarily use 2 steam controllers and have 2 Xbox 360's when we're playing more than 2 players. There are games where the right pad works fine (1st and 3rd person games like Doom and Tombraider), but it's harder to use in 2D games that require precision with a right analog stick. Could be I'm just not programming it correctly.

The Switch Pro is probably the biggest surprise, hitting nearly half a million already after only around a year and a half.

What about the 200k SNES controllers?

I didn't graduate to the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race to use a thumb pad. Mouse and Keyboard..... except when I'm playing an emulated NES/SNES/GENESIS game. Those were just made for controllers. And thanks to SC controller my Steam controller seems to work for that.

I routinely would have the camera go haywire in Rocket League any time the side of my thumb touched the right touchpad

Default settings for Rocket League using steam controller is atrocious, but it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to make it nice; (disclaimer: in my opinion) Change the right touchpad from "joystick camera" to "joystick move", just this change will make it muuuch more natural to use, I also have an inner deadzone 3 blips from 0 and a maxed outer deadzone. Ff you're accidentally hitting the outer edge of the touchpad a lot you can create a deadzone area that follows the outer edge, I used to do this because I tripped it a lot too, it takes some majiggering with inner and outer deadzones to create this border but it does work. For me one day I stopped accidentally hitting it though, so now I only keep the inner deadzone. Combine this with adjusting the ingame setting "camera swivel speed" to find your sweet spot.

EDIT: I should mention that I also prioritize horizontal (100%) movement over vertical (50%), which helps keep the camera from going everywhere when you're looking for teammates.


Last edited by Grifter on 26 Sep 2018 at 10:43 pm UTC

I’m a bit surprised about the little usage the Steam Controller has but then I think about the price, the non-convenience and somewhat bad critics it had and it’s actually OK.

I mean: it costs almost the same as a Xbox Controller, I don’t think you can buy it in that many stores, and it had pretty bad reviews when it came out.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s GREAT!! I just love it!

I'm actually surprised the Steam Controller seems to be used so little comparatively as it's been out for a few years now.

Well, 1.5 million's hardly a figure to be sniffed at, especially since anyone who also owns a console will have its controller to hand anyway and the SC has to be specially bought. “A bit more than generic PC gamepads” sounds about right to me.

I've mentioned it before, but the only thing I have trouble with using it in is driving games. It's nothing to do with the touchpads, though; it's mainly the shorter throw and weaker springs on the triggers making it harder to modulate throttle and braking. I know they're analog, but compared to the 360 controller they feel almost like on-off digital switches. With everything else though, it's absolutely fine.

I suspect there are actually even more people using 360 controllers than that. Mine wasn't registered in Steam until I saw this survey yesterday, and I've been using it for years.

A few months ago I was looking for a controller that suits me best and finally decided to bought Xbox One. I'm very happy with it - price was reasonable, design and quality is very good. It works on Debian with no problems wired and with almost no problems wireless (but xpadneo driver fixes most of them).

I was considering Xbox 360 controller as a cheap and durable option, but it has one big flaw - really bad D-pad! Most people probably don't care, but if you need precision (like in Spelunky) analog stick is not enough. I also tried on Steam Controller for a few days, but found it very cumbersome.

It's been many years since the Steam Controller has released and on Linux it still doesn't work out-of-the-box, at least on Ubuntu it doesn't. You always have to tweak system configuration files to get the controller to work. In addition to that, Steam Controller doesn't hot plug into the game, you always have to restart the game to get it to recognize the controller and if you leave the controller idle for a while that it powers off you'll have to restart the game as well, though I'm not sure if other controllers work any better.

I was given a Steam Controller from a friend and I'm pretty glad I didn't have to pay for it. It feels just too big in general, with several buttons out of natural reach, and the touchpad surface chafes. PS3 and PS4 controllers would be my controllers of choice, but the last time I tried to use a DUALSHOCK4 on Linux/Steam it made games unplayable because of extreme lag. Looking at those charts, maybe I should try a GameCube controller, since that's the only one I still own ^^

I've got 3 controllers I switch between depending on the game:
A) My Steam controller, which is my absolute favourite as the haptic touchpad is so much more accurate than a normal analog stick. Being able to use a modifier to repurpose the left touchpad to a number dial is massively handy as well.
B) My PS3 controller which works very well with xboxdrv for certain games (Dark Souls) that have don't pick up SC and have problems with my third controller.
C) My Gioteck VX2, basically a knock-off PS1 dualshock controller with turbo feature, which I pretty much only use in RetroArch.

I don't think I could use an Xbox controller as my hands are pretty symmetrical, one of those asymmetric controllers seems like it would be alien to use.

All this text and you didn't even mention the 195k of people using the SNES controller :P

Steam Controller user over here as well. And in terms of "rumble" I vastly prefer the barebones sensation of those haptic motorts that Valve decided to use . Heck some games have made some very clever use of those haptic motors and showed how nuanced they can be when used properly. Sooo for me I stick to using the Steam Controller most of the time and every now and then there is that one game that I can't see myself playing with it and I'll go back to good old PS4 controller . PS 3 was okay when it was best thing around but with the PS4 one being around there is little reason to keep using the PS3 controller lately.

I had 4x Xbox 360 controllers.

I have 4 Xbox One S controllers
4 DualShock 4 Controllers
and 2 Steam Controllers

Steam Controllers are good in very specific niche use-cases like when you want your controller to "just work" with no configuration.
The battery is excellent.
The range is good.
I am salty about not having a 2nd thumbstick for my FPS games.

The DualShock 4 controllers have terrible bluetooth range, I don't know why.
Also the battery on them isn't very good, it discharges too easily and modding them for a larger battery causes other problems.

The Xbox One controller feels great and works great but requires a Mini USB cable to work good.
The battery is fine but It's AA and not rechargeable.
The thumbsticks are more loose than the Xbox 360 IMO.
The old version triggers were absolute trash.
I think they are on v3 now.
It doens't work on Bluetooth IIRC at all yet but there is a bounty.

The Xbox 360 Controllers I used to have were battery powered.
They were the most reliable out of all controllers and had excellent range and good battery life -- though AA.
The most anoying thing was they were not Bluetooth and had a big ackward dongle you had to plug in in addition to your other USB devices -- this lead to me buying newer controllers and encountering the problems listed above.
It was a good run, but I was done.

Anyways, hope that info helps some people in the community who are unsure about the situation.

Maybe the new DS4v2+ newest version with the vertical line light is better. Personally I like the beauty and light weight of the symetry.

Steam Controller's best feature is the 6 triggers by far.

The ABXY buttons are fucking small -- very annoying.
The D-Pad imprint is annoying -- I wish it was unimprinted in the left circle touchpad. Also I wish there was another version that had 2 joysticks or that the touchpads were physically detachable to replace with joysticks as needed.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 27 Sep 2018 at 2:57 am UTC

I rewired my Duke controller to work on PC years ago and have been using that for basically everything. When I think about it the Duke controller might've been a contributor to why I moved to Linux. The unofficial drivers needed to get the Duke controller working on Windows never really got updated to work officially on anything above XP which became a problem when I upgraded to Vista. I got an Ubuntu 8 LiveCD at a local computer store and the controller just worked with no setup and I was a little shocked.

Maybe I'll pick up that Duke controller remake that Hyperkin has released for the Xbox One, maybe I'll just chop off my hands and get smaller ones so that I can use a 360 controller comfortably.

I have a couple old PS2 controllers I used to like using for platformers. Steam kept losing the settings and games kept wanting a 360 pad. Has the new controller system fixed that? I would love to use them again.

I also have a 360 controller. Decent and solid.

I love my Steam Controller. I have ranted before, but here is my pro-con list:

+ I love the right thumbpad for 1st person games.
+ The underside triggers are awesome.
+ The customization is excellent.
+ The gyro can be really good for fine tuning aim.

- The left thumb pad is worse than useless. Give me a D-pad dammit.
- The haptic was intolerable. I was ecstatic when they gave me a universal off switch.
- The button positions and springs are a little imbalanced, but I got used to them.

Overall, it is still brilliant, but could be even better. I stopped using my 360 controller, but might plug in the PS2 for the D-pad and see if it works again.

You should all know that the ps4 controller is amazing. The trigger and bumpers are nice and soft, and the dpad is actually usable (unlike both xb360 and xb1 controllers). The dpad is in fact a great way to play many platformers because you actually know which direction you are pressing. With dead cells for example, down jump is hard to get right with stick, but trivial with dpad.

The steam controller is honestly not great to handle. I love it for dual stick shooters like neon chrome as I can use both pads and not deal with stick and buttons which are far from reach. I love the second input at the end of the triggers too, which comes in very handy for rocket league boosts.

But generally speaking, I tend to go to my ps4 controller instead of the steam one, you should try it too!


Last edited by ShabbyX on 27 Sep 2018 at 10:10 pm UTC

If you're not looking at the percentages, I'd say 1.5 million sales of the Steam Controller makes it quite a bit of a success in terms of raw sales. Judging from the stats, it has more units registered than Logitech and similar ones.

If they release a second iteration with some improvements, they could probably be up there with the PS3 or higher.

They should maybe lower the price too. Controllers are quite pricey and the stats in general seem to show that people are just using their existing controllers from their respective consoles on PC rather than buying something specific. If they could make a cheaper wired option then more people would probably be tempted to buy the Steam Controller specifically for PC gaming.

Wired? I plugged in my Steam Controller once, when it wasn't recognized ootb by the sysyem.
It's 2018...
Anyway, I agree with the rest of your comment ;)


Last edited by wojtek88 on 27 Sep 2018 at 6:25 am UTC