Steam detects Bluetooth Xbox gamepad but receives no input

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Devin 11 Mar @ 5:26pm

I'm using Steam on NixOS (a Linux distribution) and am having unexpected difficulties with gamepad input. I'm using the xpadneo kernel module to support my Bluetooth Xbox controller as an input device. I've confirmed that my system is receiving input from the gamepad -- evtest, jstest, and even a website all respond perfectly fine to input with the controller. However, while it successfully recognizes that the gamepad is connected, Steam (and any games I'm playing) fail to receive any input from the gamepad. I've tried Steam's "Calibration & Advanced Settings" and all manner of configuration changes, but nothing seems to work.

Any ideas for troubleshooting this issue?

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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments

Silicon Vampire 11 Mar @ 5:30pm

You are better off, asking in the Linux forum.

Devin 11 Mar @ 5:40pm

Where is that? Sorry, I've never really had to search for help with Steam before

Wolf Knight 11 Mar @ 5:41pm

Originally posted by Devin:
Where is that? Sorry, I've never really had to search for help with Steam before

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/221410/discussions/

egs 11 Mar @ 5:53pm

X11 or Wayland?

Devin 11 Mar @ 6:02pm

Originally posted by egs:
X11 or Wayland?

I'm using the Hyprland Wayland compositor

egs 11 Mar @ 6:28pm

Originally posted by Devin:
Originally posted by egs:
X11 or Wayland?
I'm using the Hyprland Wayland compositor

If your controller requires Xbox360 emulation it may not work under Wayland due to experimental feature requirements. But in that case, Steam itself should be able to react to controller input in calibration settings, if proper udev rules are in place.
Any way I would check with X11 setup first and make sure all evdev and input libs with both 64 and 32-bit abi are installed.

Have no experience with xpadneo, but xboxdrv and other emulated controllers may not work in games until some environment variables are set for SDL, like

SDL_GAMECONTROLLER_IGNORE_DEVICES SDL_GAMECONTROLLERCONFIG

This should not be required for Steam itself.

Devin 11 Mar @ 7:03pm

I'm not using xbox360 emulation.

What's strange to me, and what I've just realized, is that I'm pretty sure this is a degradation. I can pretty clearly recall playing games like Elden Ring with this controller on this same system, Hyprland and all. Something must have changed 🤔

Originally posted by egs:
if proper udenv rules are in place

Any idea what those need to be? I would expect NixOS's programs.steam.enable option to handle something like that for me, but it's still worthwhile to make sure.

egs 11 Mar @ 7:14pm

This files are shipped from Valve, but usually packaged by distribution and named like game-device-udev-rules which has files like:

/usr/lib/udev/rules.d/60-game-input.rules

with a lot of lines like this:

# DualShock 4 over USB hidraw KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="054c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="05c4", TAG+="uaccess"

You can create such file yourself for your specific controller in

/etc/udev/rules.d

This is not required if your user has "input" group access, which is a security risk.

This may work, or not

# /etc/udev/rules.d/99-xpad-access.rules ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="input", KERNEL=="event*", DRIVERS=="xpadneo", TAG+="uaccess"

Last edited by egs; 11 Mar @ 7:20pm

Devin 12 Mar @ 8:48am

Okay so..
I disabled xpadneo. then steam started to work. but the next time i tried to connect my controller over bluetooth, it failed. so i re-enabled xpadneo. then suddenly steam started working with xpadneo again.

i think this is just a moment where unplugging it and plugging it back in worked. i'll update if it's broken after a reboot or something

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Date Posted: 11 Mar @ 5:26pm

Posts: 9

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