PS4 Controller Getting Native Support on Steam

The days of having to use third-party programs like Joy2Key or DS4Windows to be able to use the PS4 controller, the DualShock 4, on your PC will finally be over, at least for game’s on Steam, as Valve’s Jeff Bellinghausen has announced, during the recent Steam Dev Days conference, that the company will be bringing native support for the DualShock 4 to its platform. The announcement comes as part of a new feature for the Steam Controller API that will bring support for other controllers to the API, with the PS4 Controller being the first the company will provide support for.

“Believe it or not, when you use the PS4 Controller through the Steam API, it’s exactly the same as a Steam Controller,” says Bellinghausen. “You make the exact same API calls, you only get actions, not inputs, and the Steam API takes care of everything.”

Bellinghausen said that Valve decided to start with the PS4 controller because it has “a lot of overlapping functionality with the Steam Controller” including the gyro and touchpad. He also mentioned that “existing native support for the PS4 controller on the PC is a bit weak; in this case Steam itself is communicating directly with the device so everything that’s nice and reliable.”

While Bellinghausen didn’t mention exactly when support for the PS4 controller would come to Steam, he did mention that similar support for other controllers are planned.