If you are like me and use different controllers to play games on Steam, such as the Dual Shock 4 from Sony (don’t forget you can use it on Linux using the excellent ds4drv driver), you will find that sometimes games launched from Steam do not recognize the controller even though it’s mapped like a regular XInput controller (ds4drv allows such a mode). I have for example this issue with Owlboy (note that when I use my Steam Controller there is no issue whatsoever).

There is now a good way to deal with this kind of issues. If you go in Steam Big Picture, you can now activate a new option, in “Controller Options“.

There, by default, all games will run with “Global Settings” turned on. You need to change this settings to…

…”Forced off“. This way, the controller will be recognized properly by such games.

So, if you ever encounter such issues with your non-Steam controllers, you can consider trying this out.

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