In the past few days, Valve has held its Steam Dev Days event and has announced that Steam will soon have native support for PlayStation 4 controllers, without the need for third-party software to enable it to work.
The update that will enable PS4 controller compatibility is to the Steam Controller API. Valve’s Jeff Bellinghausen said:
“Believe it or not, when you use the PS4 controller through the Steam API, it’s exactly the same as a Steam controller. You make the exact same API calls, you only get actions, not inputs and the Steam API takes care of everything.”
By using the Controller API, game developers receive some benefits including:
- No more in-game controller menus.
- Full player configurability with sharing.
- Automatic support of all major controller types.
- Benefit from future updates including software updates and new controller types.
The PS4 controller won’t be the last controller to be supported by the Controller API. Valve decided to support the PS4 controller first because it’s of high quality, has standard controls, features gyro and a touchpad, and its existing native support was weak.
Bellinghausen finished off his presentation explaining that all this effort was in pursuit of “a great user experience” and that if Valve misses the mark then nothing else matters.
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