Developers will have to do some work on their end, but players will soon be able to filter games by the kinds of controllers they support.
Valve has announced an update to Steam that will make it easier for developers to reveal if a game features support for the DualSense controller. With the update to Steamworks, developers and publishers will be able to more easily describe a game’s controller support.
The questionnaire presented to studios and publishers about controller support will affect the game’s Steam store page, allowing companies to pick between “Full Controller Support” or “Partial Controller Support”. There is also an option for special cases for games that might only work with a specific control scheme.
Valve points out that support for DualShock and DualSense controllers isn’t assumed by Steam automatically if there is support for the Xbox controller. The company states that developers will have to do specific work with their games to ensure support for PlayStation controllers.
Players will start seeing new display and filters in October that will allow players to pick games that support the controller that they have available to them. valve mentions that the update is to help the over 87 million players on Steam using at least one controller, according to recent Steam Hardware Surveys.
For studios that might have trouble developing bespoke support for PlayStation controllers, Valve also mentions that Steamworks provides streamlined APIs to help provide a game with PlayStation controller support as long as there is support for Xbox controllers.