Finally the valve brought back the Steam Controller this year. The second-generation pad went on sale May 4 for $99, with twin trackpads, magnetic TMR thumbsticks, four rear-grip buttons, and a small 2.4GHz drive that doubles as a charging port. It sold out in less than an hour and by mid-afternoon the $99 SKU was gone. People were experiencing transaction errors mid-purchase and eBay listings were already between $230 and $250. Valve has since opened a reservation queue, but if you missed the first enemy, you’re now waiting in line.
However, if you already own the Steam Deck, you already have the Steam Warden feat. On board are two haptic trackpads, a gyroscope, and a full array of buttons and buttons that made the Steam Controller worth asking for in the first place, and you can actually use it on your PC for gaming. However, there’s a catch about how you connect it: When the deck is connected to a computer, it won’t show up as an HID gamepad because it’s a stand-alone computer without USB gadget mode. Same thing over Bluetooth; a host that pairs with multiple controllers rather than a device pretending to be a device.
People have been asking Valve for a native solution for using the Deck as a controller for years, and so far every method has routed the Deck’s inputs over your network. You stream to the Deck, and the trackpads, gyroscopes, and haptics come back to the PC as part of the same connection. As a result, it’s not a true wired controller, and to be honest, the Deck is a bit of an awkward board to hold for hours on end. But hey, it works and it’s free if you already have the hardware. For now, it filled the gap perfectly while I waited in line to pick up a new Steam Controller.
Steam Link turns the Deck into a remote gamepad
This is a free app on Discover
The way I decided to get this working is using the standalone Steam Link app rather than the Remote Play stream built into the Steam client. You install it from Discover in Desktop mode, where it appears on Flathub like any other Flatpak. Both machines must be on the same network and logged into the same Steam account, and Steam Link will find your computer. The first connection asks you to confirm the PIN on the host to pair the two, and then it remembers the PC.
Once connected, your computer’s desktop flows to the Deck, and the Deck becomes the input device for everything you launch. This It basically treats the Deck like a Wii U GamePada display and controller combo that talks to a console that sits elsewhere in the house. You hold the deck, the game runs on your computer, and the trackpads and sticks control it. Nothing actually installs or runs on the deck outside of the Steam Link client, so it doesn’t matter if the game is locally in your library or not.
For lag, you might want to go into the streaming options and lower the resolution, since you’re not actually looking at the Deck screen. There’s no reason to stream a crisp 1280×800 image to a screen you’ll never look at, and the lower resolution gives more room for connection access. Steam Link also reveals a bandwidth limit and a passkey for hardware decoding, both of which are worth setting and forgetting.
Over Wi-Fi, it’s fine for most games, but you can take Wi-Fi out of the equation on both sides. Put your PC on Ethernet, probably redundant, and run the deck through a dock or USB-C to Ethernet adapter and you have a wired path all the way to the end. There’s still no direct USB controller cable that does the job, and inputs still travel over IP, but wired LAN reduces jitter and latency to the point where most people don’t notice it at all. For more sensitive games (looking at you, Celeste fans), this can be a problem, but will be fine for most titles.
This is as close as the “wired” idea that people go looking for actually gets. There’s no setting that turns the deck into a wired gamepad, so the closest you’ll get is a fully wired network between the two machines.
Closing Steam in desktop mode hands off the trackpad and haptics
It often feels like a native game
The reason I suggest using the Steam Link app over the built-in Remote Play is because of how the deck handles its controls. If you enable Steam Link from within game mode, the Deck’s own Steam layer is still running underneath, and it asks for a say in how the trackpads and Steam button behave. You’re dealing with two Steam Inputs to control the same device.
The fix is to switch to Desktop mode, close Steam completely, and then open Steam Link by itself. When the local Steam client is out of the way, the Steam Input configuration from your computer takes full control of the Deck. The trackpads, haptic feedback, Steam button, and rear grips all respond to the controller layout of the main machine instead of the Deck native.
This is especially important for trackpads, which is what the Steam Controller’s entire identity is built around. They offer a larger controller and fantastic haptics, something that no Xbox-style gamepad can replicate. Allowing the host’s Steam Input to have them means that a game configured for trackpad aiming or scrolling will behave as if it were a real Steam Controller connected.
It feels like this though real controller for your games and FPS titles that support it, layered gyro aiming on the stick for fine adjustments, even as they work natively. The haptics under the pads give you the same textured feedback you’re used to, and it feels like a complete setup overall.
The only downside is that you work outside of Desktop Mode, which feels a bit buggy the first few times. To use the Deck, you close the software built around the Deck. Once Steam Link is up and running, you forget about it and get the purest version of the trackpad experience the Deck can offer.
VirtualHere brings you closer to a real controller with more difficulty
It’s more work
If you want the deck to appear as a real Steam Controller rather than a stream target to Windows, there is a second way. VirtualHere is a USB-over-IP tool that exposes the Deck’s internal Steam Controller HID to the network, and the computer running the VirtualHere client sees it as a local controller. For Windows, it’s just a connected Steam Controller.
It’s more appealing than I’d recommend for most people. You set a user password on the Deck, drop the Linux binary into a folder, add it as a non-Steam game so that Game Mod will launch it, and point the client to the IP and port of the Deck. It asks for that password every session, and it can be quite difficult to get out cleanly.
This is more suitable for non-Steam launchers or when you want the OS to act like a gamepad connected to the Deck. For everything else, Steam Link asks less of you and helps you play faster, so I like to use it the most.
Not a Steam Controller, but something shaped like a Steam Controller you already own
Steam Deck works very well for this
None of this makes the Deck the new Steam Controller, and it’s worth being aware of the limitations of such a setup. The deck is heavier and wider than anything you’d choose to hold as a pad (unless you like the Wii U, I guess?), the sticks aren’t slip-resistant TMR units, and you can only use it with devices on the same network. The previous Steam Controller can be connected to anything that will accept a Bluetooth controller, a bit of work though. If you want the real thing, a reservation queue is the only honest answer.
With all that being said, the parts that make the Steam Controller unique, such as the trackpads and haptics, sit on a handheld device that many of us already own. can be used for all kinds of things. Closing Steam and streaming over a wired network gives you PC Steam Access-controlled pads for the price of an app you can install in two minutes.
I’d still love to have Valve’s shiny new Steam Controller on my desk, but until I can actually get my hands on one, the Deck does a good job of filling that gap.
