Steam Now Officially Supports Playstation 4 Controllers On PC

The Steam Controller and the Steam Link have made it a lot easier to take your PC gaming from the desk to the couch. For certain genres of gaming, like online first person shooters, you’re going to get destroyed if you’re trying to use a controller while everyone else uses a keyboard and mouse, but for a lot of PC games it’s a nice change of scenery to hit up the sofa.

You don’t need the Steam controller in particular, you can use the Xbox 360 Wireless Controller if you have the USB dongle, for example, but this new native support makes everything a lot more smooth.

You don’t have to use software like this anymore if you want to play Steam games with your Playstation 4 controller:

Steam has had a few missteps over the years, but generally they always seem to err on whichever side is more player-friendly. They’ve built up a ton of goodwill over the years under the reign of Gabe Newell, and this is just another example.

Thanks to Steam’s new native support, it’s a breeze. Steam communicates directly with the device itself, points out Valve’s Jeff Bellinghausen:

“Believe it or not, when you use the PS4 Controller through the Steam API, it’s exactly the same as a Steam Controller,” Bellinghausen said. “You make the exact same API calls, you only get actions, not inputs, and the Steam API takes care of everything.”

Here’s some more information from the Steam’s patch notes:

Added Steam Configurator support for PS4 Dual Shock Controller. Enable in Big Picture settings Add/Test Controller settings. When enabled, PS4 controllers will have access to the same sort of customization/configuration support as Steam Controllers, including native API support. PS4 Controllers using this system can map the trackpad, gyro, buttons, etc. to keyboard, mouse, or x-input outputs and can make use of action sets, touch menus, radial menus, and so forth.

Don’t own a PS4 already? Bellinghausen has stated that Steam plans to add more native support for other controllers in the future, which is a solid move and a strong fist-bump to console gamers, because Steam’s allowing you to use your own controller instead of buying theirs. Could you imagine if Microsoft released a patch that allowed you to officially use a PS4 controller on your Xbox One, or vice versa?

Feature image credit: tested.com