The Steam Controller is Growing Up!

It's been one year since the Steam Controller first shipped to customers. Since then, there have been over 80 controller-specific updates to Steam, making it possible to play even more games from your couch. From Activators to Action Sets, the Steam Controller continues to evolve.

The Steam Controller features dual trackpads, HD haptic feedback, dual-stage triggers, back grip buttons, and fully-customizable control schemes. Find your favorite mappings in the Steam Community, or create and share your own.

Want a Steam Controller? Visit the store page!

And, It Keeps Getting Better and Better

Key feature updates added to the Steam Controller this year:

Activator Type
Regular Press
Regular Press
Double Press
Long Press
Start Press
Release Press

Activators

It's always been easy to add a simple key press or game action to any of the Steam Controller's buttons, but with the addition of Activators, the Steam controller is even more powerful. By changing the settings on the button activator you can do things like: Cycle through a set of keys with a single button, assign one key on press and another on hold, have one action on a single press and a different one on a double press, etc.

Flight Controls
Vehicle Aim
Driving
Walking

Action Sets

Some games have different control schemes for different types of game play. For example, you may have one set of controls for walking, one for driving and one for flying. With the Steam Controller, you can define a different Action Set for each mode, then switch between them on the fly as you play.

Civics Tree

Radial Menus

Radial Menus allow you to assign many actions to a single trackpad or joystick. Map dozens of weapons in a first-person shooter or add a selection for each construction mode in a city-building game. You can configure the Radial Menu style to match the game by selecting from 100s of icons and setting the size, color, and placement of the on-screen display.

Chording

Chording is combining multiple buttons to achieve an action. With the Steam Chording Configuration, holding the Steam Button will open up a whole new customizable configuration that is available regardless of where you are, in game, at the desktop, or in Steam itself. Use the Chording Configuration to give easy access to media controls such as volume or mute, invoking an on-screen keyboard, mouse cursor controls, or even putting the PC into sleep mode.

Style of Input
Mouse Joystick

Mouse-like Joystick

Some FPS games ship without support for controlling the view with the mouse. In these cases you can use the Mouse-like Joystick mode, that translates between swipes of the trackpad and the joystick movements expected by the game. It’s one of the many features that allow the Steam Controller to play any one of the thousands of games in the Steam catalog.

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