Xbox One controller works in Steam BPM but not in games

[nik0_gentoo]

Hello everyone,

Following Gentoo wiki's article, I managed to install Steam however I'm having a weird issue with my Xbox one wireless controller : the controller is recognized sucessfully by Steam in big picture mode, everything works. When I launch any game, the controller is not working, the game does not seem to see it. Only the big Xbox button is working and opens the Steam big picture overlay, only keyboard and mouse are working.
I tried activating / deactivating the Xox controller and generic controller options in big picture mode but it does not have an effect.
I investigated for several days now and I believe I can isolate the issue to Steam itself :
I installed the flatpak version of Steam and in this one, the controller works in game flawlessly.
It's not a very important issue since I can use the flatpak version, but for the sake of understanding what I could have done wrong and possibly help others having a similar problem, I'm opening a topic on the forum.

Here are some details regarding my configuration
- Gentoo x86_64 with the kde multilib profile
- Desktop environment : plasma
- Linux kernel version 5.9.6 (custom configuration)
- Init system : OpenRC

Note : my controller is also recognized successfully in the plasma control center, which furthers my belief that the issue is related to the Steam ebuild in some way.

If any other configuration information can help understanding what's going on, please let me know.
Since it's working with the flatpak version I'm thinking I may be missing a use flag or a library, but I don't really know where to look next.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thank you

[Ant P.]

Check permissions on /dev/uinput, your user needs rw access to it for steam's controller-remapping stuff to work. That's the most common problem.

Installing games-util/game-device-udev-rules may help here, though it should already be there if you use the steam overlay. Also make sure you don't have any old files in /etc/udev/rules.d/ that might override that.

[nik0_gentoo]

Thank you for the support, here's what I've checked and done after :
- I can first of all confirm that games-util/game-device-udev-rules is installed like you said.
- I checked /etc/udev/rules.d, it currently does not contain any file or folder

I looked at the permissions on /dev/uinput, they were as follows

[nik0_gentoo]

One other thing I noticed : the ownership I set for /dev/uinput, using

[Ant P.]

The "+" on that ls output means it's using ACLs; if changing the group didn't fix it then chances are one of those already allowed it so it wouldn't matter anyway.

Do you have steam-overlay packages installed? What use flags are set on those?

[389292]

are your gamepad settings in flatpack version of steam and regular installed version the same?
Steam has built-in xbox360 emulation, maybe it is disabled for your installed Steam but enabled in flatpack?

[nik0_gentoo]

[nik0_gentoo]

[Ant P.]

Everything there seems to be in order...

I've just noticed the /usr/bin/steam script that Gentoo installs does some weird stuff to set SDL_JOYSTICK_DEVICE at startup; that might explain the difference between it and the flatpak (which does nothing).

Try copying that script to your homedir and commenting out those lines, and see if anything changes.

[nik0_gentoo]

I tried this but unfortunately it did not solve the issue, I did some additional investigating and wanted to report on that :
- When the controller is connected using bluetooth, I can't use it in any game, it just does not work. It does however respond as expected in Steam big picture mode.
- When the controller is connected via USB, and disconnected from bluetooth, it works in some games but in most of them it does not. In a game where it works, I also noticed the layout is not right, for instance the directionnal cross was not reponsive and I could only move around using the sticks.

One thing I thought of : it looks like Steam loads a controller configuration when it launches a game, maybe linked to these configs are corrupt in some way in the regular Steam (on my install at least), and not in the flatpak version. As a matter of fact, it appears the configuration loaded by Steam is different when using bluetooth and when using USB. That plus the fact that it is semi-working using USB tells me it could be worth looking into.

When following your suggestion and launching the modified steam script from terminal, I noticed a couple of messages appearing that could be linked to the issue, I'll try looking into this next and I'll post some excerpts later on.

Thanks once more for the support, I appreciate it and I'm learning a couple of things in the process, which is always useful

[nik0_gentoo]

Ok! I made some significant progress : the xbox one controller is now working in wireless mode in several games. In the other ones, my understanding is that for some reason, in regular Steam, I need to use a specific Steam configuration to make it work (a layer that converts gamepad input into keyboard ones if my understanding is correct)

At this time, I'm not entirely sure whether the following is relevant so take it with a grain of salt, I'll try and confirm all this later :
- First : I noticed that my make.conf could be the culprit, I had configured :

[nik0_gentoo]

Alright, it finally works !
I'm not sure yet what specifically fixed the problem but I suspect somthing was wrong with my USE flags, either globally or for Steam. I'll try to narrow it down later but for the sake of people who might run into the same problem, I wanted to share my current configuration (confirmed working with XBox One S controller in wireless - bluetooth mode):

Global USE flag configuration:

[Ant P.]

I wonder if ABI_X86=32 is required on bluez here? I don't have that (steam-meta doesn't ask for it), and my PS4 controller also doesn't work unless it's wired.

[nik0_gentoo]

Hi !
I'm not sure for the PS4 controller, but if it helps I can tell you that ABI_X86=32 is not selected on my side :

[Ant P.]

It works fine on the desktop, and things outside steam see it as a controller just fine. Steam won't see it unless I plug it in though.

[nik0_gentoo]

Alright, so it definitely is similar to what I experienced : my controller was working in KDE, and in Steam the behaviour was different when using the controller plugged in or with bluetooth. In bluetooth it would only work in the big picture mode menu but not in games, except for maybe a couple of exceptions. in USB, I could get a bit more games to work but again, not all of them. Lately after my last changes it looks like the controller is recognized fine by all games in bluetooth, I need to confirm that it's also the case using USB.

I don't want to point you in a wrong direction though. I'll try to get to the bottom of what the root cause of my problem was, and I'll report back then. At the very least, I would like to be able to explain why what I did work, and right now I'm not entirely sure.

[Babaorheum]

If you want to use XBox One X/Series with bluetooth, you need to use xpadneo driver :
https://atar-axis.github.io/xpadneo/
_________________
Sorry for my English, i'm French

[Ionen]

[FilthyPitDog]

[Ionen]

[FilthyPitDog]

[PlatinumTrinity]

How did you guys get PS3/PS4 controllers working? On my system some of the buttons on them can't be mapped. I think it's the two triggers. It acts like a 4 button controller. I think it's all dinput devices but I don't have others to test. I want them to map just like xbox controllers.

Controllers have always been a clusterfuck on PC. I don't understand why there isn't a simple program to map them all. Even after you set up drivers they aren't plug and play. You never know what order they'll be seen in. You can't plug them in mid-game and swap them. Is there anything like this out there?