But then I need to leave that keyboard and mouse somewhere and it won’t be as convenient as picking the controller that’s already there. Plus I need this so sporadically that when I do they will be out of battery and it will be much more of a hassle.

It can literally just be your desktop's keyboard and you'd only need to pick it up if you need it for something specific. So you don't need to buy anything extra and you don't need to keep it charged.

Therefore you don’t care about that use case.

Except that I do? Because I would be able to use the controls on my steam deck. However, using my keyboard and mouse is not something I'd consider to be less practical.

They do work, just not as a controller, but you can use the device to navigate KDE and do stuff even without steam opened.

You can use them in a basic manner. Shortcuts, on-screen kb and other stuff don't work.

You might be exaggerating on the memory usage there

I literally looked at system monitor and got the number from there. I can share a screenshot if you want.

proper drivers can’t achieve that because controllers have less buttons than the steam controller

Proper drivers can be purpose built. You don't need a mega driver that can work with any controller in existence. It just needs to work for the Steam Controller. Have you never manually installed a driver? Because it sounds like you don't understand what a driver is.

Yes, but why would steam decouple them? That only incentives people not to use Steam which is their source of money.

That's precisely what bothers me. Steam isn't subsidizing their hardware because buying it makes you more likely to use the store and give them more money. They're charging full price AND forcing you to have the Steam client open. It's shitty.

they won’t do something that loses them money

Again, they already got your money when you bought the controller. They wouldn't be losing anything.

What a weird argument to make, does GoG galaxy has features that benefits someone other than GoG?

Literally yes? They sell games that are DRM free. You can buy the game and never open GOG Galaxy if you want. You can add it to steam or do whatever you want. Because you already bought it and you decide how to use it, not them.

just like how other controllers require their own software to map extra buttons and such

That's exactly what they should provide. Something completely standalone that lets you use the controller where you want and however you want.

Maybe have a read on how drivers are written, it might give you a better idea on why this was done on this way.

Now that is rich. It was done the way it was done because they want to force you to use the entire client, and you said it yourself. There's no technical limitation.

The previous paragraph you’re literally complaining that SteamInput is bound to steam. What are you asking for if not for SteamInput to be released as a separate thing?

Releasing it separately? Yes. However, you literally said "Could Valve have released an open source version of this?" and those are very different things.

in your ideal version of the controller, when you plug it in without steam, what input should the trackpad give you? What about the back buttons? What about the grip and other touch sensors?

If I were using Windows for example, I would download SteamControllerDriver.exe and, after installing that, the controller would work with all of its features enabled in any game I run in any client (or no client at all if it's DRM free).

I'm sorry but you don't strike me as someone that either respects their own rights to **actually **own what they bought and paid for, nor someone that knows what they're talking about. So I'm out, bye dude.