- #Steam controller mod#
- #Steam controller software#
- #Steam controller Pc#
- #Steam controller download#
“With a traditional controller, people think of it as a solely physical object: you build the hardware, you build a thumbstick and the thumbstick says ‘I’m being pressed right’, and that information goes to the game. “We’re very interested in trying to make hardware more like software,” says Walker.
#Steam controller software#
Another concept that Steam Controller symbolises is the transfer of software philosophies – ease of iteration, consumer customisation – to hardware. Importantly, however, openness to customisation isn’t restricted to button configuration. “We wanted to make sure we supported all that at a level above the game, so it doesn’t matter what you’re playing, you get that power.” “We had to build a system that allowed you to configure a controller to handle all these old games whle also letting you play new games in a different way,” says Walker.
#Steam controller download#
The pad is configurable to work with titles that weren’t designed to support it players can go through a process of realigning the controls by matching them to the game’s own set-up, or they can download a configuration worked out and shared by another player. This concern with customisation and iteration is a core element of the Steam Controller design. We’re very interested in trying to make hardware more like software Valve understood the value of customisation, iteration and community way before the smartphone games industry took those values to its very core. The game was then regularly tweaked and updated for the next decade, responding to the needs and wishes of fans.
#Steam controller mod#
So Valve employed the developers of the Quake mod Team Fortress and released the game as a standalone title to significant success and acclaim. Back in the early days, when ex-Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington first formed the company to work on the first-person shooter Half-Life, they immediately noticed that there was this whole modding community attached to the genre: fans were creating their own levels for hits like Doom and Quake, even expanding these into spin-off games. Valve has always been good at figuring out what gamers are doing and then working out where it will lead. The problem is, if you take that approach, it kills our company within some number of years.” It’s certainly scarier than thinking ‘I’m going to work on that thing because it’s making a lot of money and I can add another percent’. It’s scary to say ‘I want to work on this thing and other people want to work on it too, but we don’t know if it’ll make more money’. “It takes cultural effort to make sure we don’t fall into an easier way of thinking. “At any point in our history the thing that was being the most successful from a business perspective at some point was the thing that made no sense if you looked at it from a pure accounting perspective,” says Walker.
#Steam controller Pc#
When the company first announced its Steam platform in 2002 there was some initial resistance there was nothing similar out there for the PC and besides, Valve was already making plenty of money with its games. This is a key element of the Valve philosophy: to be slightly ahead – or at least outside – of current thinking. We don’t know what’s going to happen next but we want to have a controller that can survive whatever the next steps are.” One of the great things about the PC is that this is where all the innovation is happening, whether that’s virtual reality or new business models. “We had to find this design that worked for the largest library of games that any device has ever attempted to deal with, but at the same time it had to be somewhat future-proof.
“We had this really interesting challenge,” says Robin Walker, a veteran coder and designer who has been on the Steam Controller project since its inception three years ago. What this controller is all about is a question that gets right to the heart of what Valve itself actually is. Now it exists in strange liminal zone between software developer (it still makes the popular Dota 2 game), online store and hardware pioneer. So why was Valve so keen to make this thing? The Seattle-based company used to develop games like Portal, Half-Life and Left 4 Dead, before concentrating on its digital distribution business. The Steam Controller is designed to bring the precision controls of the mouse/keyboard combo to a handheld form factor.
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