Nibodhika

I meant the remapping of the back paddles only seems to work in Bluetooth for me, the controller itself works on both modes, but that is not surprising to me as most controllers just work out of the box on Linux.

I'm going to ignore most of this because we're going in circles.

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).

What is all of its features to you? It already sends different inputs on all of its different buttons and sensors, games can receive those inputs they're just weird because they're not what you expect them to be. If it were to behave like a controller it wouldn't allow you to send mouse or use the back buttons or trackpad since controllers don't have this, so you would be losing of features. The only way to access those features is to have an intermediate layer doing the remapping and translation, which is why I said that the Steam controller doesn't make sense without SteamInput.

And the thing that you're missing is that in order to allow the community to easily build that software (which it has been done for the OG controller) the controller needs to behave exactly the way it does. If it were to map itself to a controller on a hardware level so that the OS picks it up as a controller then it would lose the ability to be remapped. Take most other controllers with back buttons out there and try to write a driver for them that allows you to use the back buttons and you'll understand

In most cases it'd be faster and cheaper to start over but sunk cost is a bitch.

• We will need 6 months and $X to rebuild everything from scratch
• But we already have a semi-working thing, can't you fix that instead?
• Oh right, then it would be 8 months and $2X to fix that.

Wireless. Keyboard. (And mouse, if you want it).

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. Plus I already have the controller in my hand, so being able to just have a mouse to click on a launcher or arrow keys to select an entry in GRUB or something similar is just so convenient. For a long time I had a KB+mouse plugged to it, but since I got the OG steam controller I haven't needed to.

you don't understand because I do have a Steam Deck and it's connected to my TV most of the time but, unlike you, I have a wireless kb+m (it's what I'm using to type this).

Therefore you don't care about that use case.

the controls on the device don't work in desktop mode.

They do work, just not as a controller, but you can use the device to navigate KDE and do stuff even without steam opened. Which is precisely the point, if they worked as a controller they would be useless to control the desktop.

Steam is using 900MB of RAM whether you actually need to use steam or not. That sucks. I just want to use the controls on my device. Proper drivers can achieve that without all of the unnecessary Steam bloat.

You might be exaggerating on the memory usage there, but I do get your point. It is a valid point like I said, but no, proper drivers can't achieve that because controllers have less buttons than the steam controller and you would lose on the ability to use it as KB+Mouse which you're not understanding is a feature lots of us want.

Steam input is a component of the Steam client and is only tied to it because Steam wants it to be.

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

I don't know why this is so hard to understand for you, or why you're defending it.

I understand that, and I also understand that Valve is a for-profit corporation so they won't do something that loses them money. You might as well ask why they don't allow to use their cloud to store random files without having to buy the games from them.

It's not like this arbitrary limitation is benefiting anyone other than Steam.

Yeah, I agree, but it's Steam software, it's meant to benefit Steam. What a weird argument to make, does GoG galaxy has features that benefits someone other than GoG?.

The appeal is the device's capabilities, not its software limitations.

And with the way that Valve went the capabilities are still there without steam, if they had gone the route you wanted to it would be even more tied to Steam just like how other controllers require their own software to map extra buttons and such. The way they made it it's trivial to write a driver that takes it behave like you want to, going the other way around is not. Maybe have a read on how drivers are written, it might give you a better idea on why this was done on this way.

Of course it'd be a weird ask, but I have no idea where this is coming from. That's not what I'm asking for.

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?

Here my friend, is where you're answering why Steam forces Steam Input to be a part of the client.

Yes, precisely.

Who is even asking for this??? xD I'm just saying that they don't need to bundle it with the Steam client.

I'm, and most people who bought the OG controller too. Let me ask you something, 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?

Be warned it only seems to work in Bluetooth mode for some reason, via the dongle I don't get the back paddles to show up. That being said I want to echo the fact that I also have an 8BitDo and has had great quality. Also they work out of the box in Linux, so no worries there.

I have a desktop PC plugged into my TV, and have had for the past decade or so. The OG steam controller has saved me multiple times from having to reach behind to plug a keyboard and mouse. I understand you don't care for this use case, but the appeal of this controller is in steam Input, if you plan on using it just like a regular controller then you're better off buying an 8BitDo or similar for half the price.

There were open source alternatives for the OG controller, one that I used for a while is https://github.com/kozec/sc-controller and I'm sure similar ones will pop for the new one. Unlike most proprietary controllers each button and input sends a distinct input so a driver for it is trivial to write (most controllers with back paddles for example require some software to map them to other controller input and they send the same input from the button and the paddle making them impossible to work without the official software).

Could Valve have released an open source version of this? Yes, but they're selling the controller in their platform to be used in their platform so it's a weird ask, you already have to have a steam account to buy one, and SteamInput is a big part of why I use Steam even for non-steam games. And realistically without SteamInput this controller is not that appealing.

No, hate speech should not be protected, and there's an obvious reason for that. We already recognize that speech that purposely harms people is not protected, for example going into a theater room and screaming FIRE causing people to panic and stampede and killing someone the person will be charged with involuntary manslaughter. That is not so different from someone going online and saying "gay people should be killed" and causing people to go out and do that, in fact I would even drop the involuntary from the charges against that person, because his intention was clearly to incite someone to do it. I'm not taking away the responsibility from the person who committed the act, but this situation is similar to a how in a group planning a crime even the boss who was in every meeting telling people to commit the crime but did not actually participate in gets charged with. And the same excuses apply "No, I didn't think that because I told them to go and kill someone they would do it" is not a valid defense for a mafia boss, and it shouldn't be for any person with public influence.

It's not an analogy, it's an actual use case for the controller. I don't remember if it was LTT or GN that had to do some BIOS change when reviewing the controller and showed how it even works there. You might not care about it, but to me being able to select a grub entry with a controller means I never again need to struggle with my PC that's behind the TV to plug a keyboard if something breaks.

Edit: Forgot to mention launchers and other similar stuff that expect mouses to interact.

Nice it's not doa.

Yes, selling out in 20 minutes is definitely a sign of a doa product.

No, but it doesn't work as a controller outside of steam, because it's what makes sense. Every time someone complains about this I feel like they're completely missing the point of the controller.

Does your BIOS know how to handle a controller? Most don't, but can handle a mouse and some specific keys. How are you expected to change your BIOS settings with a controller unless it can act as a mouse+KB?. Or even without going into BIOS imagine something corrupts Steam and now you need to reinstall it, or do some other OS fixes, can you do that with a controller? Probably not. The steam controller allows you to plug your PC behind your TV and not having to get a KB+Mouse to use it in the vast majority of cases.

Those are just a few examples, but at the end of the day the difference is that most controllers are meant to be used to play controller games, the Steam Controller is meant to be used to control your PC a part of which is playing controller games, but also a lot of other things were never intended to be used with a controller. Therefore it needs to be able to emulate KB+Mouse by default because with a KB+Mouse you're likely to be able to go from most states into having Steam to launch a game, whereas a controller is useless to navigate your OS or BIOS.

Tô me it reminds me of the things people did with the original steam controller, e.g. https://youtu.be/Bwq2btaPio0

But the English wouldn't have it so they went with the roman God Saturn for Saturday.

And what makes this even weirder is that in the Roman languages all days are Roman Gods EXCEPT Saturday and Sunday. But there is an explanation for both these things, and it becomes quite clear when you know the days in some Latin language, e.g. in Spanish it's:

• Lunes: Moon (Luna) day
• Martes: Mars (Marte) day
• Miércoles: Mercury (Mercurio) day
• Jueves: Jupiter day
• Viernes: Venus day

The interesting is the obvious conversion:

• Moon day -> Monday
• God of war: Mars -> Tew -> Tuesday
• God of thunder: Jupiter -> Thor -> Thursday
• God of love: Venus -> Freya -> Friday

Wednesday should have been Hermsday for Hermod who's the God of messages equivalent to Mercury, but I think they thought it was bad not having a day for the allfather and gave him Wednesday.

What about the weekend? In Spanish (and most other roman languages) they are:

• Sábado: Latinization of Jew's Shabat
• Domingo: Dominicus, i.e. the day of the Lord

As you can see at some point Latin languages started using their new christian religion to name days, but before that those days were:

• Saturni: Saturn day -> Saturday
• Soli: Sun (Sol) day -> Sunday

So as you can see the days of the week in English are mostly the days of the week from ancient Rome, just adapted to a different culture.

But why didn't they change Saturday and Sunday? My guess is that because the equivalent of Saturn is Freyr the name would have been too similar to his sister's day Friday. As for Sunday, in earlier Roman history the Sun wasn't an important god so Sunday might actually reference the sun and not the deity so no need to convert it. And in later periods the Sun represented Roman imperialism and centralized power so they wouldn't want that one changed. But these are just guesses from my part, if anyone knows the real reason I would love to hear it.