Gamepads are Becoming Increasingly Popular on Steam
On the occasion of adding support for PS5's controller to Steam, Valve revealed that the daily number of people using controllers in the service has doubled over the last two years.
- The number of people using controllers on Steam daily is twice as big as two years ago,
- In pad-friendly games, the share of gamers using controllers can exceed 60%,
- Valve has added support for the DualSense pad from PS5 to Steam's public beta,
- The share of PlayStation pads in all controller sessions has doubled over the last two years,
- Currently, Steam supports over 200 different controllers.
Valve has revealed that over the last two years the average number of players who play on Steam with gamepads every day has doubled. No more specific data was given, but it was reported that there are millions of such people.
Of course, the popularity of controllers depends on the type of game. Up to 60% or more players can use them in typical controller-friendly games. In the case of skateboard games it is over 90%.
This information was revealed when Steam added support for DualSense, the PlayStation 5 controller.The players can enjoy features such as LEDs, touchpad, vibration and gyroscope. Supported titles include Death Stranding, No Man's Sky and Horizon: Zero Dawn. All of this can now be tested in the public beta of Steam's desktop client so that Valve can make sure everything works as it should.
The addition of DualSense support is not surprising, as Sony's controllers are becoming more and more popular among PC players. On Steam, PlayStation controllers are now used in 21.6% of all pad sessions, compared to 10.9% two years ago.
Steam's API already supports more than 200 such devices. In addition to standard PC and console pads, the supported list includes joysticks, steering wheels and dance mats.
