Steam Controller Update Lets You Customize Every Button Press

The Steam Controller continues to be a thing that is not super comfortable for a lot of people, but that hits just the right spot for customization junkies. Valve’s regularly updated it since launch, and now it’s gotten one of its most ambitious updates yet.

Activators, currently available on the controller’s beta client, allow you to customize individual button presses. Here’s how they work:

“Activators sit between inputs (such as a button on the controller) and binding outputs (such as a keypress). They control how the input is turned into output and provide a number of settings to control this. Some simple examples are long press, double press, binding cycling, toggles, and delays.”

“There is no limit to the number of activators that can be placed on a single input, so a button can have a normal press, a long press, and a double tap on a single button, each firing off different actions in a game.”

So you could, for instance, set a single tap and hold for running and a double tap and hold for sprinting on the same button. Or you could go big with it, per Valve examples like toggling into an entire different control set while holding a button, and releasing to go back to a typical control set. And again, you can do this kind of thing with every button, with no limit to the number of activators on a single input.

There’s A LOT of room for self-expression, in other words. The Steam Controller is now your canvas. Go out and paint the world. Or make an MLG gag control setup for Farming Simulator. You do you.

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