Steam has supported the Xbox 360 and Xbox One controller almost since the digital platform began, and Steam had been working on their own Steam controller for some time. However, Valve and the team working on Steam have now confirmed that they will be launching native DualShock 4 controller support.
The DualShock 4 is often hailed as one of the greatest video game controllers of all time, but support on Steam is very low. Most games on Steam, even ports from PS4 and Xbox One games, natively use the keyboard and mouse or an Xbox 360 controller, but very rarely do they add in native support for the PS4's highly praised controller.
All of that is going to change soon. Jeff Bellinghausen from Valve and Lars Doucet from Level Up Labs revealed during the Steam Dev Days event (via Gamasutra) that they will be adding full native DualShock 4 support on Steam when they launch the next API update.
"Now, why start with the PS4 controller? Well, not only is it a really nice, high-quality controller, but it's also got a gyro and a touchpad, so it's got a lot of overlapping functionality with the Steam Controller," they explained. "Also, existing native support for the PS4 controller on the PC is a bit weak; in this case Steam itself is communicating directly with the device so everything that's nice and reliable," they went on to say.
Steam users normally had to resort to third-party software such as XPadder in order to get their DualShock 4 controllers working with their PC games. This will no longer be necessary with the new support being integrated into Steam.
However, Steam will still prioritize their own Steam controller, and this is heavily emphasized in the presentation. The main benefit for gamers is that they now have the option to choose which controller they prefer. Gamers can now use their Xbox One controller, their PS4 controller, or a Steam controller if they have neither.
