Earlier quoted context omitted.
Valve wasn't always like this. They were infamous for never allowing refunds, but due to EU regulations they just did a complete about face and has one of the friendliest refund policies in the ESD business. Probably just behind Costco or something.
It was Australian regulations. The EU was happy to do nothing and keep letting us get ripped off.
Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
291–300 of 632 posts
Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
The introduction of the refund made them get rid of their deep discounted flash sales though. Real OGs remember that you could get fairly new AAA games for a song on, like, a random Wednesday. It was part of the initial appeal of Steam. Those explicitly went away because of the refund policy. https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/4pnd4p/psa_yes_there... (People were really upset at the time) Their new refund policy…
> Their new refund policy is great, The "played for less than two hours" refund policy is more of a compromise than great, IMHO. It works well for games that are quick to run and enjoy. However, quite a few of the games I've played will easily burn two hours on loading, compiling shaders, watching unskippable branding animations (splash screens), tuning graphics settings, setting up key bindings, and working past mis…
If a game takes more then five minutes to become fun then return it. I've returned plenty of games with under five minutes of play time, because I don't have the patience to purchase boredom.
Two hours is far more than enough to determine if a game is for you.
Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
#293Can anyone share their experience enjoying the two pads they put on their controllers?
I have a Steam Deck and love it, but the only experience I have with those pads is “dammit I accidentally touched the pad again.” If I want a mouse, I just connect a Bluetooth mouse.
I thought for sure everyone knew it was a flop and we’d never see it again, but obviously that’s not right since they are back. What am I missing?
Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
#294Even if Valve and Steam is great and overall a blessing for the PC space, I don't like the direction they take with this controller. It only works with Steam, it can't work on a desktop OS without it, despite standard layout. It is a subtle move towards a walled garden.
I'm not sure that's Valve's fault. Windows is designed for gamepads to emulate an Xbox controller. All those Steam Deck competitors are implemented as an Xbox controller with a partial keyboard grafted on. That's why you need Legion Space or Armoury Crate to make them usable - they tell the controller firmware what keybindings to send for those rear paddles. InputPlumber serves this purpose on Linux. Without it, you…
Windows supports Generic HID game controllers with 8 axis and 128 buttons already. And a few hat switches. And if your devices needs more than that, you can enumerate as multiple devices if needed. Not sure if there is a HID type for rumble support though. So, there's no reason a Steam Controller couldn't operate without a special driver. Some functionality may require custom software to support though. I have several Virpil controls and the entire setup will function as a simple set of generic HID devices. The only special bit is some software you can optionally run to control advance per-application remapping. I don't have a Steam Controller, so I have no idea if it can show up as a generic HID controller or not.
Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
#295I love the readme on the gitlab page [1]. It feels so.. friendly :) > This repository contains CAD files for the external shell (surface topology) of Steam Controller and the Steam Controller Puck, under a Creative Commons license. This includes an STP model of each, an STL model of each, and an engineering drawing with critical features/keep outs for each. Feel free to use these to make your own Puck holders, Contro…
"Your steam controller is yours, unlike your games, which you have no right to resell, or leave them as inheritance when you die"
I still think it's weird that Valve is viewed as so friendly to gamers when they're probably more responsible for taking away game ownership on PC than any other one company.
Prior to Steam, I used to routinely buy used games, give away copies of games I didn't play anymore, etc. Steam basically ruined all of that.
Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
It still is a damn good deal. Steam abstracts a whole lot of messes. In ye olde times you as a game developer had to acquire a publisher for each country you'd plan on selling your game to deal with local distribution structures and laws, taxes, payments, update distributions, DRM and anti-cheat, user management... Steam conveniently abstracts all of that for you. One stop shop. No complex deals just to deal with get…
> unless a country is affected by US sanctions A list that's growing by the day lol
That's tariffs and you gotta admit, Steam abstracted that away, too! Everyone else had to deal with Trump's latest BS on their own.
Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Answering a now-deleted answer regarding PS4 controllers working out of the box on Windows: PS4 controller support on Windows used to be a huge hassle, because you had to install DS4Windows to make it work. Nowadays, Windows automatically downloads the proprietary drivers to make it work, but I'm not sure if that covers the PS4 controller-specific features such as the touchpad, gyroscope, lightbar or if it enables XI…
Can Valve do the same with their controller? Release a Windows driver so that I can use it with my emulators?
You may be able to use SC-Controller:
https://github.com/C0rn3j/sc-controller
Note: the Windows support is a WIP and the devs don't have the new Steam Controller
Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Steam client is free and well-supported on all gaming OSes. It also provides Steam Input, which ensures customization parity with Steam Deck. In Valve's eyes, cross-platform support is already here. A custom driver could always be made by the community. It feels a little absurd to expect Valve to write and support four different gamepad drivers, when they only need one.
> A custom driver could always be made by the community. It feels a little absurd to expect Valve to write and support four different gamepad drivers, when they only need one. That is what the entire industry does though. Imagine if you needed an application running in the background for every peripheral you have, for your monitor, for your GPU, for running a hotspot on your smartphone over USB. Imagine having to ins…
For complex gamepads, the entire industry most certainly doesn't do that. It's not a class-compliant device, the preexisting OS-level mechanisms for Xinput and DirectInput do not accommodate anything but fight rudimentary fight sticks. The same goes for the original touchpad-based Steam Controller.
Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It doesn’t get the full features but it’s functional as a gamepad at least So it’s the controller and not Windows then, if partial functionality is okay (which seems fine to me).
For the OG controller on Linux, it was/is possible to use third-party open source software like "sc-controller" to map the pads and rebind things the way Steam does, without needing Steam running. I don't have any reason to believe that similar projects won't work for the new version.
> I don't have any reason to believe that similar projects won't work for the new version.
Sc-controller theoretically works, somebody with the hardware has to test though:
Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
50-75% off of AAA games from that year were not uncommon. I don't think the sales have ever really been comparable ever since. There are people who have put together Wayback machine compilations to compare - I just took a look at the 2014 and 2015 deals (refunds were ~ 2015) and there was a remarkable drop-off in the sales and variety of games at deep discount. I think more importantly for Valve though - the daily fl…
You could get entire publisher catalogues for peanuts. I think at least half my steam library is useless filler because I bought every game WB ever published for $40 to get the new batman game or similar.
I payed like 100 bucks (probably less, i don't remember the exact amount) for everything valves ever published, which isn't as good of a deal but shows it can still be done