Valve has announced to developers that they're going to be rolling out better ways to show off controller support for games on Steam.

In the announcement , they highlighted the additional checks they will be putting in for PlayStation DualShock and DualSense controllers. Giving developers the ability to go through a controller-support questionnaire in Steamworks, to indicate if their games play well with controllers like the DualShock or DualSense.

Valve said that starting in October, they will be rolling out new ways to show this controller support to Steam users. One way may look a bit like this:

The updates to how Steam will display new controller support will include:

• Updates to store page area that displays controller support to also specify the level of PlayStation controller usage.
• Updates to some browse pages to make it easier for players to find new games that support their controller device well.
• Updates to the Steam Desktop client to indicate a game in your library has PlayStation controller support.
• Updates to the Steam Desktop client to make it more clear when a game requires use of a controller to play.

As for why Valve are doing this they said that it has become much more common for PC players to use a controller, noting that since 2017 Steam has "seen over 87 Million users play at least once using a controller" and about 67% of them use a form of Xbox controller, with the rest being "PlayStation controllers, Switch Pro Controllers, and hundreds of other devices". However recently they've seen the most growth with PlayStation controllers noting that in 2018 they were only "about 11%" but they now see "27%" use PlayStation controllers.

Clearly using a controller on PC is popular, so it's good to see Valve are helping developers to better advertise what their games support.

With the Steam Deck out, and many other handhelds coming along, hopefully we will also see even more developers actually hook up some proper full controller support with a good UI for it.

What's your preferred gaming input? Do you stick with a mouse? Use a controller? Let us know in the comments.