I would normally be pissed about it, and do tend to get annoyed at every other controller manufacturer who make it necessary to use proprietary apps to make full use of their controllers.

But in the case of Steam, I'm already using their input software with every other controller I use for the simple fact that it is that useful. Also, it's probably only a matter of time before there are upstream kernel drivers.

I have been thinking about this for a while, and I don't think I would be.

A few reasons to back this up, firstly Epic have no hardware background and so I have nothing to have previous excitement over. Compared to Valve, where I have used the Index and I own the old steam controller and a Deck. Epic launching a controller just isn't exciting to me.

Secondly, there are a load of controllers out there, and a lot of good controllers. If I was only able to use the controller within the Epic launcher, I would just get something else.

Thirdly, this would be an epic exclusive, I am not sure I would have actually head about it. They are impressively good at being a marketing black hole.

Yeah, if Sony sold you a controller that requires playstation everyone would be up in arms... Ah, no, bad example, their controllers do require playstation and it is an open source driver that makes them work... I know! If Microsoft sold you a controller that requires Windows everyone would be up in arms... Ah, no, bad example, they already do and it's an open source driver that allows it to work outside of it... I guess this is just more of the same? Except (I still don't have mine so can't fully confirm but would be surprised if it didn't) the steam controller probably works just like a regular controller outside of Steam, you just lose SteamInput which is very important for this controller.

Steam's street cred in danger here. They are going to join them not beat them.

Difference is that those who extensively use Steam Input like me have already been adding games to Steam to utilize Steam Input in non Steam games to set up things like gyro aim, radial menus, modeshifts, action sets, etc.

Steam Input is a powerful remapper and free. Paid options like ReWASD ended up getting people banned, since mouse and keyboard users started using it to cheat by having their mouse emulate a joystick and the company refusing to remove support to bind controller inputs to mouse/keyboard.

It'd come down to how good Epic's controller remapping software is in supporting advanced configs, and customization for inputs like gyro and touchpads and third party controllers.

They did, a couple of weeks after launch. It wasn't hard, it was just a USB device with lots of inputs so the software made a fake controller and allowed you to map inputs, it's very likely the exact same software would work for the new controller for the inputs that both had. This thread is filled with fearmongering by people who have never held the OG steam controller in their hands and don't understand this device.

I’m thinking about the people like me who have a Steam account, want this controller, but would also love to use it at our friends’ places where there’s just a Switch 2 or a PS5.

For compatibility, I’m better off using 3rd party controllers.

It's still a negative because what if you decide you move away from Steam. Are you just going to throw the controller in the bin because you can't use it elsewhere? Are you going to keep the entire Steam client on your machine just because you want to use the controller? And that's assuming it's easy to use the controller with non-Steam games. For example from the review they struggled to get the controller to work with KCD2 because they booted it through Epic launcher and they couldn't set up the launcher through Steam so they had to take a completely different approach to set up the controller just for KCD.

My entire library isn't on Steam and that includes games I play with a controller. If setting up non-steam games is a pain in the ass for this controller I'm just going to stick to my Xbox controller because that's pick up and play.

It's probably true by definition since I imagine the first batch will only be sold through the steam store 😅. I have the original steam controller and as I've been moving towards GOG and Itch my steam client and steam account remains vestigially just as a bloated steam controller driver. Honestly I would also accept it if they let us use the client completely offline without an account as well.

It's called driver config and it's not a tremendously complicated bit of software. Most of its functionality doesn't need to "inject into games" - it just needs to remap the inputs so the driver can present them in whatever way works for the game. If the game doesn't support anything sensible, then maybe fancy stuff is warranted, and you might well miss out on that from a driver config utility. But that's OK.

Imagine if Xbox controllers only worked for Game Pass.