It’s my favorite controller for Steam, yeah! I have gyro aiming set up in minecraft; right trigger half pull enables gyro-to-mouse, and left touchpad pulls up a bunch of menu hotkeys.

If you want a budget controller with lots of features, go on ebay and get a used Dualshock 4 (PS4 controller). It’s got a touchpad and gyro so you can do some interesting stuff with it.

right pad for mouse, left pad for hotkeys, all the way. Great for games that use the entire left half of the keyboard.

I’m in the same boat. I’ve looked around and there really isn’t anything. You could buy some third-party joy-cons but you’ll have the same issues.

Workaround for now is to make sure you have line of sight between the joy-con and the steam deck. Their reception is fine when unobstructed.

Sounds good. The main time I’ve found myself using the Rise4 paddles is for Minecraft. I’m already using both bumpers and both triggers for quick hotbar management, so I’ve got no way to jump or sneak while aiming. So I have L4 = Cross = Sneak, and R4 = Circle = Jump, and that covers all axes of motion.

I guess the difference is just convenience, in that case. With “real” paddles, I could program them in Steam Input and they’d remember their setting per-game, instead of me having to fiddle around with the remap buttons each time I want to enable/disable the paddles. But yeah, since it’s just a convenience, I’ll wait for a better price. Thanks for the sanity check.

Sounds about like what I’m thinking, yeah. I’ve seen it in “like new” condition on ebay for $150. Is that closer to what its worth?

Alternately, I have a modded DS5 with Rise4 remap kit, which basically adds paddles that clone the face buttons. No macros, just one-to-one. Would that match your PS5 usage, or do you use the paddles for something unique?

Short version: probably not. Most emulators don’t support networked multiplayer.

If the game natively supports LAN play on PC, like Minecraft or Among Us, then yes, it’s possible to connect a Steam Deck to other machines via shared wifi or an ad-hoc network.

However, if the game was designed for a custom multiplayer protocol, like a GBA or 3DS game, then you’re out of luck. There are rare exceptions; some games are so popular that they have mods for network play, such as Project M for Super Smash Bros Brawl. But outside of those rare exceptions you cannot play emulated multiplayer over a network.