Valve's new Steam Controller is the best gamepad I've used, but it stops being one when you close Steam
Valve's new Steam Controller is considered the best gamepad by the author, offering a great gaming experience, especially with its haptic trackpads and Steam Input. However, it has a significant downside: it stops functioning as a gamepad when Steam is closed. The controller's design and features are reminiscent of the Steam Deck, with the trackpads being a standout feature that sets it apart from other gamepads.
- ▪The original Steam Controller was launched in 2015 and sold around 1.5 to 1.6 million units before being discontinued in 2019.
- ▪The new Steam Controller features haptic trackpads, which are considered its best feature and have not been replicated by other gamepad manufacturers.
- ▪Valve's Steam Input software, introduced with the 2015 controller, has improved the functionality of other gamepads on PC, including the DualSense and Switch Pro Controller.
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Record
| Original publisher | XDA Developers |
| Canonical URL | https://www.xda-developers.com/valve-steam-controller-best-gamepad-used-stops-being-one-close-steam/ |
| Publication time | Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:10 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-03T00:00:46.468Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-03T00:00:46.468Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | manJ9cYdEsd2 · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": "1", "name": "Home", "item": "https://www.xda-developers.com/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position":"2", "name": "Valve's new Steam Controller is the best gamepad I've used, but it stops being one when you close Steam", "item": "https://www.xda-developers.com/valve-steam-controller-best-gamepad-used-stops-being-one-close-steam/" } ] } Valve's new Steam Controller is the best gamepad I've used, but it stops being one when you close Steam By Adam Conway Published Aug 2, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT I’m Adam Conway, an Irish technology fanatic with a BSc in Computer Science and I'm XDA’s Lead Technical Editor.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at XDA Developers.
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