I would normally be pissed about it, and do tend to get annoyed at every other controller manufacturer who make it necessary to use proprietary apps to make full use of their controllers.

But in the case of Steam, I'm already using their input software with every other controller I use for the simple fact that it is that useful. Also, it's probably only a matter of time before there are upstream kernel drivers.

I have been thinking about this for a while, and I don't think I would be.

A few reasons to back this up, firstly Epic have no hardware background and so I have nothing to have previous excitement over. Compared to Valve, where I have used the Index and I own the old steam controller and a Deck. Epic launching a controller just isn't exciting to me.

Secondly, there are a load of controllers out there, and a lot of good controllers. If I was only able to use the controller within the Epic launcher, I would just get something else.

Thirdly, this would be an epic exclusive, I am not sure I would have actually head about it. They are impressively good at being a marketing black hole.

It's still a negative because what if you decide you move away from Steam. Are you just going to throw the controller in the bin because you can't use it elsewhere? Are you going to keep the entire Steam client on your machine just because you want to use the controller? And that's assuming it's easy to use the controller with non-Steam games. For example from the review they struggled to get the controller to work with KCD2 because they booted it through Epic launcher and they couldn't set up the launcher through Steam so they had to take a completely different approach to set up the controller just for KCD.

My entire library isn't on Steam and that includes games I play with a controller. If setting up non-steam games is a pain in the ass for this controller I'm just going to stick to my Xbox controller because that's pick up and play.

I’m thinking about the people like me who have a Steam account, want this controller, but would also love to use it at our friends’ places where there’s just a Switch 2 or a PS5.

For compatibility, I’m better off using 3rd party controllers.

It's probably true by definition since I imagine the first batch will only be sold through the steam store 😅. I have the original steam controller and as I've been moving towards GOG and Itch my steam client and steam account remains vestigially just as a bloated steam controller driver. Honestly I would also accept it if they let us use the client completely offline without an account as well.

I think that has to do with the old steam controller getting recognized as multiple HIDs, which means Heroic Launcher with activated Gamepad support might not actually work. Try deactivating gamepad support in Heroic (as counter intuitive that might be).

(Can't try it myself because my ex got my 2 steam controllers for her PC to use as mediacenter from the couch + backup - we used it that way for a good decade and i have no issue learning something else, while she had to learn controllers from scratch when we met and it took a while, and i am not a sadist lol)

Edited to Add: You are using the so called "Snail Mode", which in addition to being as slow as it gets regarding input sensitivity on the track pad, it also is a fixed configuration which cannot be changed. The right trackpad is a mouse (and identified by the system as such), while most of the buttons and the d-pad map to keyboard commands. Heroic sees a gamepad, but there's actually no real gamepad input incoming, so it's not XInput-compatible.