When we sat down in the mock-up living room at Valve's headquarters earlier this month in Bellevue, Washington, hardware staffer Erik Johnson handed us one of the first final Steam Controller models, then said emphatically, "we've left most of the hardware work behind us now." That's no small statement for a project like the Steam Controller, of which at least three prototype versions have appeared at expos and conventions over the years—meaning surely more have been generated and discarded behind Valve's closed doors.

A touchscreen came and went, as did a square grid of center buttons and even an odd d-pad arrangement of round buttons. Now, finally, the company has settled on a major, finished design (which we wrote about at length today).

We're kidding, of course. Within minutes of Johnson's declaration, another Valve design-team veteran, Robin Walker, informed us that the company's "always in beta, always in development" ethos was indeed extending to the Steam Controller, if not other products like the Steam Link.

"The likelihood that any one particular controller design is right for all of our users is extremely unlikely," Walker said during our meeting. "Our goal was to get to a point where hardware could be as flexible as software. We’ve learned over the years, when we build software and it’s in hands of customers, they help us improve it. Customers using a product always improve a product."

What does that mean exactly for customers? Is the first wave of Steam Controllers going to become eclipsed by a nicer model within months? Neither Valve rep we spoke to was clear on that point. Johnson repeatedly referred to "a specific approach to how we're manufacturing the hardware," which includes "a really flexible automated assembly line" for the sake of pushing newer designs to customers on the fly.

The duo then mentioned vague plans about releasing CAD files for users to toy with and 3D print their own designs or selling users "electronic guts minus the form factor" for similar purposes. Neither staffer could clearly explain what their ideal road map toward custom Steam Controllers would look like—particularly for those who buy a first-gen Steam Controller, which evidently doesn't have a modular design. Its primary casing is made up of two plastic halves, joined together by what look to us like Torx screws.

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They also leaned heavily on the software side of the "unfinished" notion, especially due to the controller's unique pair of trackpads—a feature the team fought to include on the design in spite of customers wanting more familiar controller elements like d-pads. (Though Walker insists that the d-pad shape was etched onto the left trackpad because "people are confused without," we found in our testing that it absolutely failed to replicate the comfort or usability of a d-pad.)

Valve couldn't point to any game or experiment that has employed twin trackpads in any interesting or successful way; instead, Walker showed off the SteamOS keyboard system, which allows users to emulate using two fingers to tap at a virtual keyboard by using the thumbpads and each hand's trigger button. We could type quickly enough with it, but we were hungry to see a demo that better tested whether we could use two thumbpads simultaneously in a way as impressive as our first, long-ago Halo session did with twin thumbsticks.

What they did demonstrate, on the other hand, was an interesting use of the controller's rarely advertised gyroscope features. The Counter-Strike: GO development team created a custom Steam Controller configuration for their game so that players can control their aim in both coarse and fine ways: they can move their view around rapidly by pressing down on the right thumbpad, but they can also fine-tune their aim by tilting the controller up, down, left, and right. "Do your 180 degree flips on the pad, then use your gyro to line up clutch shots," Walker said.

The design team didn't mention any other hidden or underused features of the Steam Controller that they expect devs or users to tap into. Instead, they stressed that they have a ways to go in terms of supporting and optimizing the Steam Controller's use in various game genres. "The pad just sends input into a system, right?" Walker said. "How to interpret that input has been a huge amount of work for us." Walker listed issues such as how users typically lift their fingers off the touchpad, then bring them back to a different spot—which brings up different use expectations than when users do the same thing with a trackball or mouse.

Walker and Johnson clarified that while Valve is very interested in how the community responds to, and uses, the Steam Controller, the company won't be sifting through users' Steam Controller configuration files or other data to improve the product.

"We've gone down the data rabbit hole, right?" Walker said. "We’ve connected as much data as anybody out there, and we’ve found, it never gives you intent. It just tells you what’s happening. Maybe the best Rocket League player in the world has his setup because, say, he’s used EMACS all his life and his pinky finger doesn’t work anymore. Or here’s someone who changed the config, then quit 5 minutes later. Does that mean the config was bad? Maybe he just needed to go to lunch!"

Ultimately, both reps were confident that the Steam Controller's most avid users, much like Steam's most avid users, will make their wishlists and desires clear enough. "Our customers are really efficient at telling us things in a whole variety of ways, either passively or actively," Walker said. "That’s our core at Valve, to make sure we’re listening to that stream appropriately."