No joystick works in Steam - but is fine in Linux itself? :: Steam for Linux General Discussions

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Tatsue

1 Jul @ 4:25am

No joystick works in Steam - but is fine in Linux itself?

I have a mystery I've failed to figure out: why are none of my joysticks working - specifically in Steam?

I use Bazzite with KDE, but the same was true on my previous Arch install, and same holds true on my partner's PopOS machine:

The joystick is detected by the OS (and can be calibrated, configured, etc). On the gaming rig, in KDE Game Controller settings, I see "Thrustmaster T.16000M (/dev/input/event22)", and input is registered correctly, but Steam refuses to find it, and games (eg MSFS2024) do not find it either. Same pattern happens if I attempt to use my older Thrustmaster Warthog stick. In both cases, Steam and games happily detect the associated throttles and pedals - so it's only specifically joysticks.

I have done "ujust add-user-to-input-group" to no effect, and I've done it manually.

This used to work just fine, way back on Arch. I did decide to wait with actually playing MSFS2024 since the release was a bit buggy, and after later buying a new SSD and installing Bazzite instead... No dice. I've tried following the joystick documentation on Arch as well, since that's what I would have done last time, but nothing.

What is it that I might have overlooked that can make Steam _specifically_ reject all my Joysticks _specifically_? I've tried everything I could find in Steam > Settings > Controller, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments

Zyro

1 Jul @ 4:48am

So you already tried turning controller support off, I guess?

[GNU] Debian ☭ has Steam for Linux

1 Jul @ 4:54am

You need to convert your joystick from Dinput to to XInput, into proton/wine configuration, for that prefix. I'm at work, right now, so I can't help much, but that's what you need to do when it comes to HOTAS...
As you said, it is not a Linux issue, since you notice you can use your stick for a native Linux game, just like XPlane... Or even detect it using jstest

It is a wine/proton issue... You'll need protontricks/wine tricks and also know the steamid of the game (those numbers), or the place it is installed... But use the numbers; easier...

Last edited by [GNU] Debian ☭; 1 Jul @ 4:59am

Tatsue

1 Jul @ 7:12am

Originally posted by Zyro:
So you already tried turning controller support off, I guess?

Indeed, it had no effect.

Originally posted by GNU Debian ☭:
It is a wine/proton issue... You'll need protontricks/wine tricks and also know the steamid of the game (those numbers), or the place it is installed... But use the numbers; easier...

Oh, there we go. Many thanks for that! Somehow I had completely forgotten about Protontricks.

I'm still cleaning up after moving house, so might be a day or two before I can dig into it, but you've given me a direction to look, thanks! (If you do have more info when out of work, that's of course welcome too, but at least I'm no longer stuck.)

Tatsue

1 Jul @ 7:33am

Originally posted by GNU Debian ☭:
It is a wine/proton issue....

I solved it fairly quick, now that you had pointed my thinking in the right way. Sharing so the next person running into this doesn't have to spend as much time digging in the wrong places as I've done.

Remembering "protontricks" now that you mentioned it, I also regained a vague memory of having done something from protondb - at least back when I was making MSFS2020 and Elite Dangerous work. So I went to the MSFS2024 page over there, and found someone mentioning udev rules and, igniting even more memories, they mentioned this file:

/etc/udev/rules.d/60-steam-input.rules

With that file not existing, I created it and gave it this content (based on lsusb to get the correct numbers):

KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="044f", ATTRS{idProduct}=="b10a", MODE="0666"

For anyone googling/browsing, the numbers will differ based on which exact stick you're trying to make work. If you do lsusb you'll get the relevant numbers after the "ID", for example this line:

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 044f:b10a ThrustMaster, Inc. T.16000M Joystick

So now: Steam doesn't see the stick in the config panel, but games started by Steam do. Victory! :)