I’ve recently been playing more games with controller support on Steam and have had some issues getting them to work.

I have a DualShock 4 Controller (for a PS4) and it works fine for some proton games with controller support (Rainworld and BG3 for example) work fine out of the box. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Balatro both work with the default settings but only on Wayland (Hyprland). The games that work only on Wayland display Xbox button glyphs, leading me to believe that they are using Steam Input. I have in the past been able to play games with no controller support using Steam Input to emulate keyboard inputs on x11.

I am now trying to play LEGO Lord of the Rings which has Xbox Controller support but not Playstation Controller support and as such would require Steam Input. I would be happy to get it working on either x11 (i3) or preferably Wayland (Hyprland) but so far the closest I have gotten is being able to select my controller as an input device in the settings (by a button press being detected), this did however not allow me to perform any menu inputs and I was not able to reproduce it after restarting the game.

Overall my experience with my controller has gotten slightly worse over the past years (x11 only, I have barely used it when on Wayland) and I was wondering if anyone in this community had experience with non Xbox/Steam controllers in Steam that they would be willing to share.

A few of side notes:

  • The controller works fine for Steam in big picture mode and it is an official Play Station controller from Sony.
  • My Steam is installed via flatpak on the device using x11 and the device using Wayland.
  • Both devices are setup with EndeavourOS (arch based).
  • I run most of my non native games on Proton Experimental.

If I missed some important details that could help resolve my issues or explain why the controller behaves so different on the two devices I’m happy to answer questions :)

    • Ziglin (it/they)@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      11 hours ago

      Okay wow, I had no idea that package existed and I haven’t seen any mentions of it before. Installing it from the AUR actually fixed it for me. (LEGO lotr seems to work at least)

      Thank you for that tip, can’t believe the solution is so simple, lol. (I have already spent multiple hours trying to fix it)

      I have only ever used the controller in it’s wired mode since it’s easier and I never play from more than 5m away from my computer.

      Would you mind explaining how this fixes it? I have never looked into udev rules.

      • who@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        6 hours ago

        It recognizes well-known device IDs, and tags matching devices in such a way that they will be treated like game controllers by downstream hardware management components. For example, giving unprivileged users permission to use the device, or labeling it as a “joystick” so it won’t be ignored by certain game support libraries.

  • TabbsTheBat@pawb.socialEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    I have a dualshock 4 too. Unfortunately I haven’t tried lego lord of the rings, so I can’t help troubleshoot with that

    I had some issues with steam flatpak with some features (namely gyro) not working, so I switched to installing steam through apt, and I had no issues with the controller since except for one game where it won’t work in menus (worked fine in game) unless I boot the game up with steam input off, and then when the game loads - toggle it back on. Running it on a debian based system with x11

    • Ziglin (it/they)@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      11 hours ago

      The fix that @who@feddit.org (installing the game-devices-udev package) fixed it for me without having to switch to the version of steam from my native package manager. Thanks for the idea though, I had been considering trying it before but in the past the graphics drivers seemed to work better for me when using the flatpak version.

      • TabbsTheBat@pawb.socialEnglish
        1·
        3 hours ago

        Nice :3

        I mostly just reinstalled it cause I couldn’t be bothered dealing with the permissions of flatpak, it’s definitely not a viable solution for everyone, I just figured I’d throw in my experience haha

      • who@feddit.orgEnglish
        3·
        11 hours ago

        FYI, the game-devices-udev package is Arch-specific. In the Debian family, steam-devices is the roughly equivalent package.

  • TachyonTele@piefed.socialEnglish
    31·
    2 days ago

    Idk what Valves been doing but Steam input has gone down hill in the post couple of years. I always turn it off for pretty much every game now. If you don’t it tends to mess up the in games controls.