A long post is available on the official forum

Jan 15, 2016 14:48 GMT  ·  By

The Steam Controller is a great device, but it’s not ready, and Valve knows that all too well. A list of problems has been compiled by Valve on the official forums.

Valve knows that it needs something much better than yet another controller on the market, and the recently released device certainly fits the bill. It’s designed to help mouse and keyboard users move to the couch while at the same time providing controller users with a better experience in games.

The number of games that can be played on TVs from the comfort of a couch is limited by the controls. The mouse and keyboard users can play pretty much anything on the PC (notable exceptions are sports games like FIFA, which really need a controller, along with some platformers), but the console people can’t do the same. Games like strategies, for example, are missing completely. This is where the Steam Controller could greatly improve functionality.

Some problems remain

Valve has been doing overtime to improve the controller, and they’ve already released many updates for it. Still, some issues remain, and Valve has documented them.

“The controller is fully supported on Linux without needing a kernel driver, but Steam needs proper read-write access to the HID device nodes it exposes in order to program it. We are working with distributions to make sure the necessary access is provided out of the box, but this might not currently be the case depending on your distribution of choice,” Valve developer Pierre-Loup explains on the official forums.

He has also noted that some of the updates that landed for Steam also bring firmware upgrades for the controller. These upgrades are only performed if the controller is connected with a cable, and it needs to be mounted. Some Linux distributions don’t automount devices, so it’s up to the users to do that manually.

There is some advice updates for Mac OS users as well, but if you have a Steam Controller, make sure that you check this forum thread first, as it might teach you a thing or two.