Yet they f***ed up again, there’s no bushing around it. Despite the fact that the Steam Linux client beta from a couple weeks ago effectively rendered your Steam Controller useless and the bug was reported, they apparently went ahead and pushed it to the stable client branch – this morning I had the unpleasant surprise of holding a brick in my hands instead of a working Steam Controller.
I used the answer provided on the Ubuntu forum to fix the situation.
Just open a terminal and edit the following file with your editor of choice:
sudo nano /lib/udev/rules.d/99-steam-controller-perms.rules
and replace everything inside there by (note that you have to change the GROUP value on the 4th line, to that of your user name):
# This rule is needed for basic functionality of the controller in Steam and keyboard/mouse emulation
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="28de", MODE="0666"
# This rule is necessary for gamepad emulation; make sure you replace 'pgriffais' with a group that the user that runs Steam belongs to
KERNEL=="uinput", MODE="0660", GROUP="yourusername", OPTIONS+="static_node=uinput"
# Valve HID devices over USB hidraw
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="28de", MODE="0666"
# Valve HID devices over bluetooth hidraw
KERNEL=="hidraw*", KERNELS=="*28DE:*", MODE="0666"
# DualShock 4 over USB hidraw
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="054c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="05c4", MODE="0666"
# DualShock 4 wireless adapter over USB hidraw
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="054c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0ba0", MODE="0666"
# DualShock 4 Slim over USB hidraw
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="054c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="09cc", MODE="0666"
# DualShock 4 over bluetooth hidraw
KERNEL=="hidraw*", KERNELS=="*054C:05C4*", MODE="0666"
# DualShock 4 Slim over bluetooth hidraw
KERNEL=="hidraw*", KERNELS=="*054C:09CC*", MODE="0666"
One you are done editing in nano, you can hit CTRL+x, and SHIFT+y to confirm the changes. Reboot your machine, and now your Steam Controller should be working again.
Valve, seriously, you are only supporting officially 2 distros (SteamOS and Ubuntu), at least do it right…
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If you have installed Steam via the .deb on their homepage you already have the correct udev rules set, or got an update via their repository.
It was explained in the release notes though. What’s unclear to me is if it’s needed only for the Steam Controller or for all gamepads.
Yeah, but what matters in the end is that it’s a shitty end user experience. Would never happen on a console system.