Valve has published a blog post about the use of games controllers in Steam. There are two major pieces of news in the blog. Firstly Valve's stats indicate that the daily average number of Steam users playing games with controllers has doubled over the last two years. Secondly the PlayStation 5 DualSense Controller is now fully supported by games that use the Steam Input API. Yes, that includes all the special features of the PS5 controller – its LED, trackpad, rumble and gyro functions (however Valve didn't mention was made of the Adaptive Triggers).
Steam's catalogue of controller friendly games grows daily. In the last two years the number of Steam gamers using controllers has more than doubled. Of course some games are more fun to play with a controller / joypad / joystick than others. Valve's data reveals that skateboarding games, for example, "have well over 90 per cent of their players using controllers in game". Other controller friendly genres might have more of a 60/40 split in favour of using the console-like controls.
One of the touted advantages of the Sony PS5 vs the Microsoft Xbox Series X/S in the reignited console wars is that Sony's controller delivers greater advancement, while Microsoft's is a solid but uninspiring evolution. Valve has been pretty quick off the mark to integrate support for the PlayStation 5 DualSense Controller and only last week introduced beta support for it in Steam, though with some new features missing.
This week Valve has announced that "full support for the LED, trackpad, rumble and gyro features are available now". The controller and these advanced features work in "all games currently using the Steam Input API," says Valve. Unfortunately it seems to have omitted mention of an important headlining feature of the new DualSense Controller - Adaptive Triggers.
If you are interested in trying a new PS5 controller and its advanced features in Steam games please download the 'public beta Steam desktop client'. If that sounds a bit risky / fiddly for you just wait for it to go prime time, when it will have passed successfully through user testing.
