Game Developer doesn’t run hardware or software reviews. But if we did, our review of the Steam Controller would be three words: “it just works.”
To be transparent, we are echoing Valve’s words there. In our previous conversation with the company behind Steam, designer Lawrence Yang said the phrase is a major watchword for the company’s expansion into hardware. But what feels like the bare minimum for any physical product isn’t easy to achieve. And in video game hardware, even the slightest error could give players a reason to walk away and seek another activity altogether.
So the fact that the Steam Controller “just works” is a testament to the amount of effort involved in its creation. Though it benefits by iterating on the design of the wildly-successful Steam Deck, a combination of the improved D-pad, exchanging the Deck’s rear “paddles” for proper buttons, and the plug-and-play Puck charging device give it its own identity.
How did these improvements come about? According to Yang and Valve engineer Jeremy Slocum, the journey to making an easy-to-use Steam Controller meant revisiting its much-hyped—but ultimately unsuccessful—predecessor, and accepting that players want the same controller experience they get on every other platform.
The Steam Controller has to meet the baseline controller experience
“One of the things that we learned from the original Steam Controller is that people have kind of learned how to use a controller,” Yang said when asked about the new controller’s design origins. He described the original device as “novel” and great for playing mouse-and-keyboard games with a handheld device. “But if you wanted to play a game that was actually designed for a game pad, it could be pretty difficult. It was especially intimidating to pick up and play for someone that wasn’t more of an expert gamer. They weren’t really willing to get over that learning curve.”
That assessment of the original controller being “intimidating” was important to Yang’s work. He said that his job was to think intensely about what happens between when the player receives their controller and when they start playing games with it. Every bit of friction between those two points is a moment where they might put the controller aside and never use it again.
Yang called it the “time to game” factor—the time it takes for a player to unbox the device, plug it in, and play. Valve has gotten the process down to essentially three steps: open the box, plug the “Steam Puck” into the computer via a USB to USB-C cable, let Steam recognize the controller and install the necessary firmware, and then it’s ready to go.
The Puck is what really slims down the time in that equation. The Controller has Bluetooth compatibility for players who’d prefer to skip the puck, but requiring Bluetooth first creates a scenario where the player has to wrangle with their computer’s connection settings. A wireless USB receiver could also help, but on some machines it could face interference from other cables located near the USB ports.
For both of those processes, the player would need to wrangle a separate cable to charge the controller. The Puck solves all three problems. It sits away from the computer, it pairs the controller quickly, and it charges the device. Even device charging can introduce friction, Yang said, because the act of plugging a cable into the controller can wear down the port.
It’s interesting to compare Yang’s approach to how developers onboard users in games. Developers are always striving to ensure their games are approachable (with varying levels of difficulty and friction), but they’re working with an audience that has on some level accepted the idea that they must “learn” how to play a game. That same acceptance does not exist in the real world.
Players prefer devices to work the way we think they should work—and especially when players have other options, they won’t tolerate that same degree of friction.
No Steam Deck, no Steam Controller
Yang said that many design decisions behind the Steam Controller were essentially “solved” by the Steam Deck. “We were fortunate enough to kind of have had the first version of the controller ship with the Steam Deck,” he explained, adding that the device “proved out” a number of button inputs that could be used for PC games. “Taking that and improving upon that was not easy, we had a really good base template.”
Improving the Steam Deck’s rear buttons was the first major “win” the team had when designing the controller. On the Steam Deck, the rear buttons (L5/L6 and R5/R6)…barely qualify as buttons. They’re functional, but they’re rectangular bits of plastic, not circular interfaces. Using them requires shifting your grip while holding a hefty device, and can be a literal stretch even if you have large hands.
The Steam Controller’s rear buttons sit under the curve of the controller grip, near where many players’ middle and ring fingers naturally rest. “That’s actually one of the things that we nailed down pretty quick and got really positive feedback on as we were developing the design of the controller,” said Slocum. The new buttons feel comparable to the side buttons on a well-designed VR controller, potentially opening up doors for developers who want to borrow from that interface.
The Steam Deck’s D-pad also needed a tune-up. What was tricky was that it wasn’t obvious it needed a tune-up unless you’re a player who relies on it over the joysticks. These would be players who play 2D sidescrolling games or fighting games with a controller instead of a fight stick. It’s an inherently smaller pool of people.
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Testing features like this illustrates the challenge of testing hardware in a confidential environment. Slocum said much of Valve’s testing was done in-house with their fellow employees, as well as with friends and family. To expand that pool, the company recruited “specific” testers from out in the wild who were willing to adhere to non-disclosure agreements.
“We create specific recruiting profiles where we recruit specific types of gamers…and bring them into the office and have them sit down and do various types of playtests with the controller, focusing on games they’re familiar with,” Slocum said. The main requirement was that these users were existing Steam customers.
These testers would be handed different controller prototypes that sometimes only varied in shape by mere millimeters. “Millimeters matter,” Slocum said. Some prototypes were barely different to the naked eye, but players could “immediately tell the difference” and had a preference to which model they preferred (apparently there are boxes of these 3D-printed prototypes still lingering at Valve HQ).
Slocum’s number-one goal as a “human experience engineer” was to ensure the device was as usable by as many people as possible, regardless of hand size or ability (there are obviously limitations, hence the need for devices like the Xbox Accessibility Controller). “I feel like we did a really good job making it work for all the different hand sizes, because we really focused on making those millimeter changes that put everything in the sweet spot for different people.”
Will Valve’s new gamepad make custom control schemes more popular?
There are three major reasons why players might soon be purchasing a Steam Controller. First, they’re gearing up for the release of the Steam Machine, which will work with the Controller on day one.
Second, they might want a controller that lets them play with their Steam Deck docked on a TV (Yang pointed out this was a small gap in the Steam Deck design experience that was only addressable with third-party Bluetooth controllers before this).
And third, it would be because they want to access the wide range of custom controller configurations already in use on the Steam Deck. These configurations work out of the box, and if players are familiar with modifying the Steam Deck button layout for different games, or accessing configurations shared with the community, they’ll be playing their games in their preferred way in no time.
This presents a paradox if you’re assessing the Steam Controller’s product value. A major feature of the device is its customizability. But as explained above, the controller has to operate as a “default” gamepad for players who will never touch this feature. Developers releasing games on Steam right now can either make their own default configurations or grant their blessing to a player-created one—but is it worth the time and energy if so few players will access it?
Yang said that at a minimum, developers not already supporting controllers should do so ASAP, and should further look into integrating Steam Input. “Whenever we go to GDC, or whenever we go to any sort of conference and talk to developers, we always say controller support is important…controller usage has just increased year over year.”
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“We think is a good thing to do for your game, and it will do a lot for the longevity and accessibility of your title,” he said.
There’s data to back that up. More players on Steam are using controller inputs every year (though this number is affected by the number of Steam Decks and portable computing devices entering the market). What is tricky with controller support is that the Steam Controller sits between a traditional controller and the mouse-and-keyboard experience.
“One of the things that, at least from a compatibility standpoint, that we see that can be like an annoying thing about our controller is that it’s mixed input,” said Slocum. “Games, a lot of times, are expecting a controller or a mouse-and-keyboard and not both. And a lot of the configurations people make want to use both those inputs at the same time. “
“So one thing to keep in mind is [to ask] ‘what does my game look like if someone is using a keyboard and gamepad, or a gamepad and a mouse at the same time?'”
Valve is planning to release new tutorials for players who aren’t experienced at using Steam’s custom configuration tools, which may help more players embrace one of the Controller’s most defining features.
What impact will the Steam Controller have on the video game marketplace?
According to analysts at our sibling organization Omdia, Valve’s hardware efforts will continue to focus on monetizing existing Steam users instead of reaching new customers. They estimate that approximately 40,000 Steam Controllers are ready to ship in the United States. If you use the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller’s projected 32 percent attachment rate as a point of comparison, that might mean about 125,000 Steam Machines will be sold in the device’s initial launch window.
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Those aren’t mass market numbers, but it’s worth looking at how Valve’s market strategy has impacted the broader market. Though Nintendo lit the world on fire with the portability of the Nintendo Switch, it was the Steam Deck that sparked the new market for handheld PC game devices (all of these of course, may suffer in the market if the Trump Administration’s tariffs continue to drive up prices).
Let’s narrow our focus back to the controller. If past is precedent, the Steam Controller’s success, combined with Valve’s open hardware support, means other third-party controller manufacturers might borrow from its layout. If controller usage rates on Steam continue to climb, that may be driven by players purchasing controllers inspired by the Steam Controller, and a larger portion of your audience will be expecting support for these types of device.
Will that lead to more support for custom configurations, or new types of games optimized for these controllers? Not at first. But the proliferation of these types of controllers could change that one day.
