You can now customise every button press on the Steam Controller

Valve has been greatly expanding the software capabilities of its Steam Controller ever since its launch with frequent and meaningful updates. This week, Valve launched the ‘Activators' update, making the Steam Controller one of the most flexible gamepads on the market with the ability to customise each button press.

The latest Steam beta client now includes support for ‘Activators', which will allow you to create new control options like long presses and double tap actions. According to Valve, there is no limit on the number of custom actions that can be applied to a single button either and they can all have their own haptic feedback settings.

In its post, Valve listed a few ways Activators can make control configurations better:

• You can use a Start Press activator and a Release Press activator to turn a toggle crouch into a hold crouch. Conversely, the toggle option will allow you to turn any action, such as a hold crouch, into a toggle.
• Turbo can be set on Activators, meaning any button can have customised rapid fire. This can be combined with multiple activators, so single press for single fire, while a long press will engage turbo mode.
• Use a Start Press Activator to switch to a new action set, with a Release Press on the same button to switch back to the original set. Using this technique Action Sets can act like an entire-controller mode shift. Also included in this update is the ability to copy any existing Action Set into the new set, making customisation a lot faster.
• Mode Shifts now also use Activators, so a mode-shift can be toggled on and off without continuously holding a button.
• Activators can also cycle through a set of bindings. Put Stand, Crouch, and Prone on a single button and cycle through them with each press.

If you are using the Steam controller, it is worth noting that due to these changes, configurations altered in the beta client won't be visible in the stable client.

KitGuru Says: I have been meaning to pick up a Steam Controller for a while now, a few of the other writers here at KitGuru have one but I have yet to make the jump. How many of you use a Steam controller? Would you recommend it?

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