Steam Gamepad Update Rising Popularity and Compatibility Improvements

On June 27th, TapTechNews reported that Valve launched the Steam digital PC game store for the first time more than 20 years ago. At that time, most PC gamers used the combination of mouse and keyboard for gaming, with a few exceptions such as flight games using joysticks and racing and fighting games possibly using gamepads. But since then, an increasing number of Steam players have started to use gamepads for gaming.

Today, Valve released some new data about the use of Steam gamepads and introduced the efforts they have recently made to improve Steam gamepad compatibility. In a press release, Valve stated that since 2018, the daily average use of gamepads has tripled, increasing from about 5% to 15%. Although this proportion is still relatively small among the overall number of Steam players, it indicates that more and more players are beginning to like using gamepads for gaming.

TapTechNews noted that among the approximately 42% of players who use gamepads, a considerable portion (42%) are currently using the Steam Input Service, which allows players to use any gamepad they like to play on any Steam game that supports gamepads.

According to the announcement, among the game sessions where players use gamepads, the proportion of using Xbox gamepads is the highest, reaching 59%; followed by PlayStation gamepads, accounting for 26%; while the players using the gamepad of Valve's own SteamDeck portable game console account for 10%.

In addition, Valve also listed some of the improvements they have made recently to improve Steam gamepad compatibility. These improvements include a brand new simplified gamepad configurator, improvements in gamepad use for gyroscopic aiming, a virtual menu in the PC version of Steam, automatic support for any future third-party PlayStation gamepads, and a new driver for Windows that adds support for the back buttons of Microsoft's Xbox Elite gamepads.

Finally, Valve said they have cooperated with the Japanese gamepad manufacturer Hori to ensure that the upcoming wireless version of the HORIPAD for Steam gamepad can be well compatible with Valve's Steam Input Service, and this gamepad will be exclusively launched in Japan later this year.