The original thumbstick of the Steam Controller was always a bit imperfect. I bought my Steam Controller on day one, but a few years in, the soft-touch material on the stick started to flake off. That’s gross!
Those flakes that rub off also don’t help with gripping the stick. It already has a convex-shaped top, which I like less than a concave top. It always feels like I’m pushing the stick in some direction but my thumb is slowly slipping.
After almost a decade of putting up with this, I had enough. I looked around online and found that people had figured out how to upgrade that part of the Steam Controller, and it’s actually decently easy and cheap.
The Steam Controller is held together with Torx T6 screws. I opened it up and carefully lifted up the mainboard, making sure not to harm the ribbon cable underneath. From there, I pulled the stock thumbstick cap off of the stick and slipped on the replacement one.
I now have a Steam Controller with a thumbstick that doesn’t rub off and is even concave for better grip!
They took em away cuz there’s a patent troll on buttons behind controllers. All the cons you put forth are fairly solvable or up to user preference (I quite liked the touch pads myself)
It was filed in 2015. Valve discontinued the controller at some point between that and when they finally sold out in 2019.
That can mean one of two (main) things:
Valve was so afraid of the lawsuit that they immediately stopped production and still took 4 years to sell out of their inventory
Valve didn’t care and continued to produce units up until 2018/2019 when they stopped for whatever reason
Both are fairly plausible because 4 million USD isn’t even what GabeN spends on knives in a given year. Neither paint a picture of the Steam Controller being some wild success.
Because, if it were, they could have just as easily
Paid a licensing fee to SCUF et al. Which is what I assume 8bitdo, MS, and Sony all do? … Also Valve since the Steam Deck has back paddles too
Released a revision that got rid of the back paddles
Its great you like it. That doesn’t mean others did.
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They took em away cuz there’s a patent troll on buttons behind controllers. All the cons you put forth are fairly solvable or up to user preference (I quite liked the touch pads myself)
The patent troll you’re referring to is SCUD (fuck those guys and fuck their owners, Corsair).
Thankfully, Valve won the appeal in their lawsuit a few years back and the patent is no longer valid. Unfortunately, the damage was already done
Obligatory: Fuck Polygon since it is now a website owned by people who built their empire on rape
https://www.polygon.com/2021/2/3/22264213/valve-steam-controller-lawsuit-scuf-4-million/ covers the lawsuit.
It was filed in 2015. Valve discontinued the controller at some point between that and when they finally sold out in 2019.
That can mean one of two (main) things:
Both are fairly plausible because 4 million USD isn’t even what GabeN spends on knives in a given year. Neither paint a picture of the Steam Controller being some wild success.
Because, if it were, they could have just as easily
Its great you like it. That doesn’t mean others did.
Eh, Steam Deck has buttons, which are probably different enough design-wise to avoid lawsuits.