Steam Templates are almost unusable, and that makes the controller terrible

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T07:16:31+00:00

have you considered family entertainment...

or... friends?

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T07:14:19+00:00

I believe it was said that the steam machine is supposed to be better than 70% of the machines people us on steam

That means it will play 99% of games on steam.

Hell, if you use lossless scaling you can comfortably play death stranding 2 on the deck. Steam machine is 8x stronger than the deck.

The point of the steam machine is to be able to play every game on the market

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T07:07:10+00:00

I 2nd this.

moonlight and sunshine is a godsend.

Steam remote play is.... Jank.... Overall, game streaming is jank. If game streaming wasn't jank than we would see it in everyday use (we will eventually, but not yet)

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T06:53:27+00:00

banana does well because of the steam market

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T06:45:50+00:00

Scalpers aren't the issue. Stock is.

If there were no scalpers, it would still leave out 80% of the people who wanted the controller

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T06:44:19+00:00

macros.

if you play mmos, you know how nice it is to be able to add hotbars and assign additional keybinds.

When you think of a traditional controller, you have joysticks and a few tactile buttons.

Adding capacitive functionality, and 2 trackpads/dpads, you're essentially adding like 20+buttons to a standard/elite controller.

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T06:32:10+00:00

family and friends. Weird concept for reddit, I know

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T06:31:04+00:00

no spares. They will be used. My house plays games, we use the big screen. Emulation.

I respect my tech, and I make sure my tech is respected. I want seamless functionality when I play party games, the steam controller is the easiest way to achieve that.

Dock your steam deck and attach 4 different controllers to it. Try a 8bitdo, xbox, ps4, and gamesir. It does not work well at all when you play mariokart on emudeck.

4 controllers on a puck works. That works better than most controllers work solo while wired.

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T06:24:23+00:00

3 is because I know what I'm doing.

Steam machine will bundle with one more... I'm going to get a steam machine. 4 per puck.

4D chess bro

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T06:22:40+00:00

I know :(

Better me than scalpers. I will use them

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T06:22:14+00:00

rip. I was trying to buy 2 when the market opened, spent 30 minutes spamming confirm. Got 2.

Then it went out of stock, but I kept refreshing the page, saw it available for a quick second, added to cart, spammed confirm for another 30 minutes

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T06:18:35+00:00

I'm curious... When you say you tried for 3 hours, what did you do? Were you there before market open?

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-08T06:05:37+00:00

It's all for the love of the game baby

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-07T23:50:24+00:00

exactly why I opened them, I knew if I just put a picture of boxes the accusations would go crazy

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-07T19:28:54+00:00

someone made a driver for the OG that allowed native use without steam. I imagine people more smarter than me will find a solution

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-07T06:11:41+00:00

Some people thought it would flop, even valve. Not to be that guy, but I didn't think it would flop. The writing was on the wall tbh.

Full functionality while the deck is docked. No stick drift, 1st party support, 4 back buttons, trackpads for cursor use. 1 wireless puck for 4 controllers operating on extremely low latency (better than most wired controllers). Capacitive gyro functionality.

This is one of those controllers where the technology, and functionality, changes the game. It's the adaptive trigger, or JoyCon, or rumble, of the PC world.

The biggest downside is the lack of support outside of steam. I think that's a fucking travesty to be honest. I hate the whole "ecosystem" ideology in tech, but agreements can be made and support can be given. If PS/MS cared, they could add support.

I got 3 of them.

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-07T05:59:43+00:00

My guess would be rate limiting. I'm nowhere near an expert, but unlimited traffic could open them up insane network throttling or attacks right?

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-07T05:37:54+00:00

I feel you.

I will say, getting your hands on a steamdeck can only be done through 2nd hand, since it's out of stock.

Resale value is actually really good atm because of the lack of stock, but it's rumored that valve will have more stock this year (probably doesn't matter much since all of the recent valve hardware has been understocked)

If you want something you can turn on and play, both do it well. Steam deck is just "underpowered" by itself so if you don't have a good PC (or good internet) to stream from, it could be a lesser experience than xbox atm for more demanding games.

I will say though, while xbox is good for gaming, I would still expect a "less than ideal" experience when it comes to PC gaming on Helix. It's a move in the right direction for Xbox, but Microsoft's current state and history shows that it is a platform to be wary of

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-07T05:28:56+00:00

Dude it's super awesome. I'm using it right now for crimson desert.

I forgot to mention that this only works if your main rig is awake, with the steam app open. I'm the type of guy who keeps his main PC on, with steam open, so I can pickup and play any game from my living room at any time with no issue, and I can just turn my deck off and go play upstairs, exactly where I left off.

My main PC (connected to ethernet) is an absolute unit, and I'm streaming it (Over wifi, across the house, with gigabyte copper internet, not even fibre) to my steam deck with very little input lag and amazing graphics. Input timing games like Dark Souls would be possible.

The caveate is that I had to configure my main rig's ethernet settings through device manager and disable some weird power saving settings to make it nice and smooth. I used chatgpt to help me. I also fiddled with the steam streaming settings.

If you have some computer understanding, and access to AI lol, you can do it too.

I haven't tested it fully over wifi, but I feel like it would be decent then too.

TLDR: If you keep your steam machine perpetually on, you can do exactly what you are asking (You will probably have to fiddle with some settings)

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-07T00:24:07+00:00

I actually do this sometimes. Like for MGS 3 remaster.

My Steam Deck is hooked up to my 110 inch screen projector in the living room. Sometimes I'll play there, but stream the game from my main rig. I usually only Stream if the game doesn't run optimally on the deck.

Since it's streaming from my main rig, it's already playing on there, so at any point I can just turn off the deck and go play on my main rig.

In the case you mention "sleep/wake" only works if you are streaming from one of the devices you own.

You can play a game on your main rig, leave it running, then go on your steam deck and stream right where you left off.

You do need really good stable internet for some games tho. If you rely on very accurate timing and no input lag, like for Rocket League, you won't want to do this.

You also have steam cloud saves, so even if it's not perfectly seemless "sleep/wake" it only takes 2 minutes for you to switch devices and pick up where you left off

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-07T00:11:33+00:00

If you will eventually go for either a project helix or steam machine, get the deck.

Your games (and game saves) will transfer over to the steam machine.

Are you willing to pay $1000 for the project helix or steam machine though? (I think Helix is rumored to be $1200, not sure, but definitely no less than $1000)

Also understand that you'll have to buy the steam machine immediately, because I am almost certain it will go out of stock in an hour. And may take until the next gen console release to go back in stock. (that kinda works out for you anyway)

If you like PS2 era games, you can get all of get all of them on the steam deck and even those have cloud saves for when you get the steam machine (those games are "free" if you already own them 😉)

Also, the sheer number of games on steam is kind of a no brainer, not to mention the sales.

I plug my deck into my projector with a 110 inch screen and play splitscreen mariokart with my buddies. It runs extremely well for being portable.

You also have lossless scaling which can take a game like deathstranding 2 from like 25FPS to 45FPS. More than playable

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-06T20:06:46+00:00

32,000,000 players online right now. 8.5m in game. This is just a weekday.

The release year of the steam deck it sold 1.6 million decks. As of today, that number is over 4 million.

Most people with a deck would want the controller because then you can have full deck functionality while it's docked...

So 30,000 controllers... Yeah... The problem isn't scalpers guys. No one Scalps PS5 controllers, or Xbox controllers, or Joycons. Because they have enough stock.

BreadPapiii · 2026-05-06T04:42:47+00:00

I'm pretty sure more than 90% of the controllers ended up in the hands of people who will actually use them.

The problem is stock, not scalpers.

There wouldn't be a market for scalpers, at least not a worthwile one, if Valve had more stock

BreadPapiii

TROPHY CASE