It’s a big day for Valve, as the veil has officially been taken off of their Steam Controller — with both embargoed reviews, and the official release date (May 4th, 2026) hitting today.
For those unawares, the Steam Controller is a video game controller developed by Valve. Being their second attempt at making a controller, the device is best described visually as “what if you cut the middle out of a Steam Deck and smooshed the two sides together.”
The reviews have been pretty damn glowing. Here’s a few exerpts.
What’s the secret? It’s a lot of subtle decisions that add up. For one, it’s remarkably lightweight given its size. It’s similar to the Steam Deck in that regard, which looks far heavier than it actually is. It’s also built from a smooth black plastic that also makes it feel like the Steam Deck on the hand. The grips are much straighter than those of your average controller, which ever so slightly reduces some strain. My thumbs rest naturally on the buttons and dual joysticks in that position and can just as easily stretch down to land on the trackpads. (I imagine it might be more of a stretch for people with smaller hands, but I can only speak for my mid-sized fingers here.) Though the buttons and joysticks are scrunched up high on the game pad to make room for the trackpads, it doesn’t feel nearly as cramped as the Steam Deck’s top-heavy layout.
IGN:
While there are cheaper controllers out there with some high-end features, like the $40 PowerA Advantage, they often cut corners elsewhere, typically being wired-only or lacking in rumble. The Steam Controller, meanwhile, is as full-featured as they come. It doesn’t offer every high-end controller option – notably missing are short-throw trigger stops, the ability to swap out parts, and its face buttons are merely perfectly fine rather than being particularly outstanding – but it has top-notch thumbsticks, outstanding haptics, and those touchpads you can’t find anywhere else.
I’m glad it’s seamless, because the Controller is nice. Like with the Deck, my fingers settle around the Controller’s grips, and both the joysticks and buttons are comfortable to reach by thumb. Nothing rattles when I shake this gamepad. The D-pad feels more solid, and so do the satisfyingly clicky new Steam and Quick Access buttons. (Quick Access is so handy to have on a gamepad for little things like adjusting volume in a pinch.) The rumble feels crisper than on my 8BitDo Ultimate 2 Wireless, though Sony’s haptics on the DualSense are still far better.
The strongest criticism I’ve seen so far is less about the controller, and more about what it means, which — I think — is a key call out.
Now more than ever, I value my ability to choose — which businesses I work with, where I store my software, how I play — and the Steam launcher requirement is another small expansion of Valve’s incredible power in the PC games industry. It’s too easy to say, most of my games are already on Steam, no big deal, and use the Controller as an excuse to consolidate them all on Valve’s launcher. Suddenly, Steam is where you begin and end every gaming session, rather than just most. Obviously and especially with the coming rollout of the Steam Machine, this is the reality that Valve wants: a rich industry utterly reliant on its platform of DRM, shitty revenue splits and random opaque censorship. It’s the situation that Microsoft, Apple or Epic also want for themselves, but the main difference is that this future is actually in reach for Valve, and the Steam Controller is a tiny part of the plan. If willing and unforced support of a monopoly makes you bristle as well, feel free to stick with 8BitDo.
What’s kind of a bummer is that this is not coming out alongside the much hullabalooed Steam Machine, which remains in release limbo due to the ongoing RAM crisis.
That said, if you’re a PC gamer, your games all live on Steam, and you’re willing to drop the $99, this controller sounds perfect for you.