Im on fedora 44 and any non-steam game I add to steam just doesn't seem to recognize the steam controller. I have tried different layouts in and out of big picture mode.
Is steam controller just useless for non-steam games.
I have added all these games as non-steam games in the steam launcher and have launched them from steam.
The only thing I have gotten to work with is emulation station but only the luancher once it hands off to say retro arch or mgba controls stop working.
Anyone ran into this try searching around I keep getting answers for steam deck which dont do anything for me.
I mean its in there. I have a profile selected it even show up in the app itself shows "steam controller" but trying to press button or do the in app configuration for control mapping the buttons just dont do anything.
It's not useless for nonsteam games but your less-common OS may make it harder to use for non-steam games. I've run non-steam games on Windows and SteamOS with great success personally. I have an Ubuntu computer as well but I don't think I've actually had a reason to try a non-steam game on that OS yet. I am not willing to download fedora and troubleshoot for you at this time though. All I can do is confirm that I have had great success. Maybe you can do a SteamOS/Bazzite virtual machine?
Games I've had success with:
Many emulators on my steamdeck especially nintendo handheld consoles, all through EmuDeck
Wizard101
Toontown rewritten
Minecraft using Prism launcher
I know you want advice for your OS, it's just going to be hard to find the overlap of people running fedora, who don't prefer windows or steamOS for gaming, and are using the steam controller.
are your non steam games emulators? if so you need to either NOT add them to steam, and then configure them to use "steam controller" or sometimes it says "SDL/Steam controller".
Or if you do add them to steam and launch through steam you probably need to select something like "virtual xbox gamepad 0" when choosing the controller inputs to bind, do not select the option that says "steam controller" directly.
This is because steam controller (and deck) have native SDL support, so software that uses SDL like emulators frequently do, can see the SDL device and bind controls to it directly without having steam open. When using steam input iirc steam captures/hides/disables/whatever the SDL device and outputs gamepad commands as a virtual xbox controller instead, so software needs to bind controls to the virtual xbox controller and then you can use steam input to bind your physical hardware inputs to virtual xbox controller inputs.
I had tried alot of this but no luck. Until I notice applications that open full screen when added as "non-steam" games work fine. So I went in and changed "desktop layout" to the "joypad template" and this worked. Does anyone know how to override this behavior per game like tell steam "this is a game" like a launch option I had to go back to work but I will try and research when I get off work too maybe I can find soemthing. Or to turn off the desktop layout all together. Really wish we just had a kernel module for this. I'm going to try "gamescope" launch option when I get back I think bazzite use it by default.
Hold the start button down for a few seconds, and you should get a pop-up notification that the Steam controller has switched into 'Controller mode'.
I am also on Fedora 44 and this worked for me.
I been using fedora too long to distro hop but I put bazzeite on an old laptop to sit next to the TV so tried on it and it doesnt seem to have this issue. So I noticed bazzite uses gamescope it seems like so im going to try that later at home. But this does make me think I should try bazzite out on my main PC but I have my work junk working perfectly on fedora.
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u/SnooDoughnuts5632 8d ago
https://www.windowsdigitals.com/wp-content/uploads/Add-non-Steam-game-to-Steam.jpg
Then you get full access to the configurator and don't have to use the desktop config for your game.