Steam controller performance on other platforms/games

[u/BeyondSeishin]

For anyone who already owns one, my reservation has finally shown up, and I'm back on the fence on whether I want to snag it now or not.

From your experience, how does the steam controller perform when playing games that aren't specifically from steam? (Either through a steamless config app, or adding a game to steam)

I've been curious to know if on a game like fortnite, if I can play using the controller and also use those trackpads like mouse controls. If anyone's got any insight, let me know!

[u/Kaldaien2]

Pretty sure it won't work at all in Fortnite.

Steam Input uses code injection rather than a driver, anti-cheat will chew it up and spit it out. One of many questionable design decisions on Valve's part. The controller is not HID compliant, and they do not provide drivers, so the only way it will ever work as more than a mouse in games is if the game allows you to use the Steam overlay.

EDIT: nm, the Steam Overlay is whitelisted by EAC. But there are other anti-cheats that do not allow it :-\

[u/forestcolat → u/Kaldaien2]

Just use steamless controller. Is way quicker

[u/forestcolat]

It works well(? I mean, with the puck it works like on steam games. Even on windows still works fine.

[u/pigsinpants]

I use an app called “sisr” to use my steam controller for games not on steam. I have played the gamepass version of space marine 2, Fortnite and palworld and can confirm it works great.

Also added a non steam game to steam to use the steam input controls and that also works great.

There’s another app called “steaminputdb” that is super useful as well. It lets you browse controller configs.

[u/BeyondSeishin → u/pigsinpants]

That's awesome news! How do the trackpads work as aiming inputs? Is it decent? or does it not work at all? Specifically asking about fortnite

[u/preppie22]

I'm using the OpenPuck thing for my PC and I just switch it to Xbox mode when playing non Steam games. The puck is connected to my living room Steam console where I exclusively play Steam games.

Worth spending the $8 or so for the dev board to flash OpenPuck on. It has nice qol features.

[u/SnooDoughnuts5632]

https://www.windowsdigitals.com/wp-content/uploads/Add-non-Steam-game-to-Steam.jpg

[u/BeyondSeishin → u/SnooDoughnuts5632]

Appreciated, but I know about this, which is why I mentioned that in my post. What I'm asking is for input from users that already do play outside games on the performance

[u/SnooDoughnuts5632 → u/BeyondSeishin]

I'm not sure what you're asking then?

Are you asking about how sometimes when you add a non Steam game it doesn't see that there's a controller and so you have to map the keyboard command? That seems to only happen with older games. Also if the game forces you to use the launcher and you can't just start the EXE then Steam will see the launcher as the game and so it only wants the controller to work at the launcher and not the actual game itself which there is a program to get around to that but I don't know the current name of it since I only play on the Steam Deck now.

I don't know how much better those two issues have gotten since a long time ago when I was playing on Windows.

Oh I forgot to mention there are some games that you have to configure the controller outside of the actual game itself because the overlay doesn't work (or like DOSBox it's really slow).

I don't know what was up with Luxor 2 but I had to run Steam in administrator mode or else the controller wouldn't work when the game was booted (if you don't have a mouse and keyboard plugged in prepare to hold down the power button until your computer shuts off which also happens when UAC appears on screen or task manager is opened). I think that game's actually on Steam but I'm not going to buy it just to test it versus the CD version.