I play minecraft on a private server via steam on my htpc with an Xbox One controller. I have minecraft set up as a non-steam game in steam, steam configured with the controller. Minecraft is set up to use the fabric client with a number of client-side mods (the client itself tells me I have 87 or so mods, but that has to be client patches or something, as I only have a dozen or so mods installed). When it works, it's fantastic, but the problem is that it's very inconsistent.

When I open the game from steam, the controller works in the launcher as a rough approximation to a mouse and keyboard - exactly what I want. But when I launch the actual game, it's a complete toss up whether that configuration will carry over to the game window. More often than not, it won't, and sessions often begin with me opening and closing the game many times before the configuration will carry over and I can play.

I've tried turning on and off steam's "allow desktop configuration in launcher" option, which doesn't seem to have any effect. I've tried enabling and disabling the minecraft launcher's "keep launcher open when games are active" setting, which similarly seems to have no effect. Annoyingly, I've noticed that if I alt-tab back to the launcher after starting the game, the controller is still working for the launcher, just not in the game itself.

At this point, I've installed the Controllable mod and Glossi - this configuration "just works", and is perfectly consistent, but it's an imperfect substitute for the steam solution that I prefer. But I feel like I'm out of things to try for getting the steam solution to work consistently, or at least often enough to not frustrate me before I even get into the game!

Any thoughts as to why it behaves this way and other things to try are appreciated.