The Steam Controller's stick is upgradeable!
The Steam Controller's stick is upgradeable!
Look at that new stick!
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.
Replacing the stick
It turns out the replacement sticks for the 8BitDo SN30 Pro fit perfectly in the Steam Controller!
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!
Bring those back Valve, I never got a chance to get one and want it so bad!
You REALLY REALLY don't.
Steam Controllers died for a reason. Yes, there are still some diehards but mostly it is people who never had one dreaming about how good it must have been because The Deck is REAL damned good. The reality is that it felt flimsy, had horrible buttons, and the touchpads instead of sticks (and d-pad) were god awful and basically only useful for games with no gamepad support and corner cases on stuff like Terraria or Stardew which took advantage of steam input.
Which was the big thing. Steam Controllers themselves, like Steam Machines, were a complete and utter failure outside of like five people. But it led to Steam Input (and SteamOS) which are genuinely amazing and play ridiculously well with games that don't have a gamepad mapping or don't have a good one.
Which is why Steam Controller 2 is going to be a challenge. Because touchpad instead of button or stick is bad. Touchpad in addition to buttons and sticks are godlike.
I hate controllers with a passion and the steam controller is the only one that i like. I hoard 4 of them in case they break
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)