The original Steam Controller is undoubtedly one of the coolest pieces of gear I own—and one of the most innovative, too.
I got mine right when it launched in 2015. I wanted to solve a very real problem: I was trying to turn my PC into a console.
You see, Valve had Big Picture Mode, which truly turned your PC into a console-like experience. The problem was that some of my favorite PC games didn’t support controllers. They were keyboard-and-mouse only.
But then—here comes the Steam Controller. Suddenly, I was able to reprogram all the inputs. I could take basic keys, like the spacebar, and map them to a button on the controller—like the A button. And once you did that, you could share your controller configuration with the Steam community, or reuse a config someone else already made. It was pretty awesome.
And those dual trackpads? They were swank. Incredible for first-person shooters and real-time strategy games. They were the next best thing to a mouse. And because of the angle of the handles, it all felt very comfortable in the hand—probably the most comfortable controller experience I’ve ever had.
It’s funny—just a little over five years ago, gamers hated it. Not because they ever used one, but because it was a failure. And as we all know about gamers, there’s nothing they hate more than a failure. It was dismissed as a novelty—something no one would ever use again.
Well, Valve had the last laugh. A few years ago, they released the Steam Deck. And what do you know? It’s a direct evolution of the Steam Controller. And now everyone loves the Steam Deck.
Just take a look at it—it’s got so many of the same things the Steam Controller had: dual trackpads, back paddles, the ability to remap buttons and customize layouts. Having owned a Steam Deck since launch, I can say this confidently: the most killer features on the Deck originated with the Steam Controller.
That said, it wasn’t perfect. There were a few quirks I wish they had fixed. For one, it would’ve been nice if it had dual analog sticks instead of just one. Using a trackpad in place of a right stick is fine in theory, but let’s be real: a trackpad does not replace an analog stick.
Also, unlike most modern controllers, this one didn’t have a rechargeable battery. You needed AA batteries. Now, to be fair, those batteries lasted a long time—but it still would’ve been nicer to just recharge it and forget about replacements.
Then there’s the back paddles. Only two of them. In hindsight, yeah, Valve knew they needed to evolve. I’ve grown so used to having four back paddles on the Steam Deck. They’re incredibly useful—especially in games with lots of inputs. Just good to have.
Still, this was one of the first mainstream controllers to even have back paddles. So hats off to Valve for that.
Honestly, I really wish there was another Steam Controller on the market. I know Hori makes a licensed controller for the Steam Deck in Japan, but it’s missing a core feature the original had: the dual trackpads.
To me, the dual trackpads make the Steam Deck experience. It’s something almost no other handheld has. My wife has a Legion Go, and it does have a trackpad—but only one. And honestly? That makes all the difference. It’s fine. But man… it would’ve been a better handheld with two.
Definitely one of the most innovative controllers ever made.
And yeah, I still use mine. I use it when I dock my handheld. Or when I’m on my living room PC.
I wanted to like this thing so bad. I tried it so many times I just cannot get used to the trackpad for anything beyond top down environment or platformers. Once I need a second joystick as an input it was game over.
How did you use the touchpad. My approach has been to adjust the sensitivity of the touchpad until an edge to edge swipe does a 180, and for gyro having a 90 degree rotation of the controller do 675 degree rotation in game for first person and 450 degrees for third person. Made it a consistent aim experience no matter what game I played as long as the mouse input in the game was good and didn’t do things like emulate a joystick causing negative acceleration.
And for the right touchpad I set a dpad modeshift with an inverted outer ring bind so clicking up, down, left, right, center output different inputs so I didn’t have to reach down to the facebuttons as often. And depending on the game I’d set up a chord so holding the left grip and clicking would output a different set of 5 inputs.
And I just saved the template so I didn’t need to set it up all the time.
Liked it for Doom Eternal, since I could activate gyro, swipe the camera to quickly turn, and click to swap between weapons every shot to bypass reloading all on the right touchpad.
And pvp games like The Finals clicking the right pad to switch through gadgets and using the touchpad to quickly turn and activate gyro, and not feeling like my inputs were too slow versus mouse users. And not having to bother with aim assist.
I had a setup for fromsoft games that activated the gyro when I touched the track pad. So I could swipe the pad for fast camera turns and use the gyro for fine aim. My steam controllers battery terminals were both damaged by cell bursts though. I miss the camera agility now.