Valve Steam Controller - Slice of Valve History

[jiyeon]

 

The Steam Controller is a now-discontinued game controller produced by Valve, the makers behind the gaming platform, Steam. The Steam Controller was released November 2015 and was built as a piece of Valve hardware designed for Steam’s built-in Big Picture mode for games that are suitable for use with a controller, but also designed for desktop use, as the right ‘joystick’ which I will now refer to as a joypad can actually be used as a cursor, which is something that caught me by surprise when I first got my hands on the Steam controller.

 

 

Unfortunately for the Steam Controller, it was discontinued November 2019 and sold off at a flamingly-low price. I personally bought mine for £4 the day after it was announced that it would be discontinued. It was promptly delivered six days later in an original, sealed Valve Steam Controller box.

I’ve been using my Steam Controller on and off since receiving it, playing games such as Rocket League, Euro Truck Simulator, and Grand Theft Auto V, and here’s what I think of it.

 

 

The design of the Steam Controller is quite unique, it follows the same design cues as traditional gamepads, moreso close to an Xbox One’s controller, it has a rounded silhouette, the handles are pointed inwards rather than outwards contrary to a traditional gamepad, but I find the inward curve just as comfortable as the outward curve. It does force a change of grip, but this grip ensures your hands are ergonomically curved whilst holding the controller.

The controller can be used wirelessly by plugging in a USB-A dongle into your PC to connect. The controller does require two AA batteries to use in wireless configuration, which can be inserted via removing the back panel.

It can also be used through plugging in a micro-USB cable into the upper back of the controller just like any other traditional gamepad.

The button layout is unique, and was easily the hardest part of the Steam Controller learning curve to grasp.

Upper-left is a giant, circular directional pad, or D-pad, it has a huge footprint with equally large areas to press for each direction. The D-pad is also highly tactile, each keypress takes a good amount of force and it certainly lets you know when you’ve pressed it with its huge click.
 Upper-right is essentially mirrored from the upper-left D-pad, only this time it has no embossing and is completely smooth. This is because this D-pad can be used for desktop usage as well as right D-pad.

 

The lower-left is a standard left thumbstick, and the lower-left is a standard ABXY configuration, which is standard to an Xbox One controller. There are also back and menu buttons that flank the center Steam button which can be used to trigger Steam Big Picture mode whilst in-game.
Lastly, there are also the standard trigger and bumper buttons found in the back shoulders of the controller.

 

All in all, it’s a pretty standard shape with a familiar face, but with unique upper D-pads. The different D-pads were polarising to get used to, especially since there was frequent haptic feedback in the right D-pad when used.

 

 

The controller feels fairly familiar, apart from the glaringly-obvious giant, circular directional pads. While playing Rocket League, the new D-pads took a few games to get used to, but not as difficult as the ABXY buttons which were moved down, compared to a traditional controller like a PlayStation DualShock 4.

 

The migration of the buttons into a lower-third position was undoubtedly the most difficult part of getting accustomed to the controller, it felt unnatural to have my right thumb so low to reach those buttons especially in games like Rocket League which I played extensively, which relies on the usage of the ABXY buttons for a large portion of the game.

The whole controller felt nicely-constructed, the buttons were all greatly tactile to press, the D-pads were unique but a nice alternative to the standard positioning of each of those D-pads, and the thumbstick is decently-weighted and made of a hard rubberized plastic which is durable.

 

The haptic feedback that I mentioned as a unique part of the controller was fairly nice to feel. It wasn’t aggressive enough that I felt uncomfortable, but I would’ve rather the haptics were a bit more prominent as the vibrations as the haptics are the best part of the controller.

 

 

I still could not for the life of me get used to the ABXY button position. I’d very much rather take a traditional controller layout and have the ABXY buttons in the upper-right as it feels much more comfortable.

 

 

Used as a traditional gamepad controller for games that are suitable with a controller, it’s decent enough. There are mapping changes to the controller that are available through Steam’s Big Picture mode, but I didn’t find myself needing to use those, so for the most part, I’m a regular controller regular, and that is how I treated my usage of the Steam Controller.

 

The ABXY button placement is the real deal breaker for me using the controller full-time. Having been used to other traditional controllers such as the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation DualShock 4, and even the Nintendo Switch’s joycon controllers, the placement of the ABXY buttons is shockingly hard to get used to.

 

I will stick to my other controllers for gaming, but this piece of history will be a nice decoration in my room.