Valve’s Steam service is getting native PS4 controller support in a future update, Valve’s Jeff Bellinghausen revealed at Steam Dev Days. In a transcript of the talk posted to Gamasutra, Bellinghausen explains how the DualShock 4 will work with the PC platform.
“Believe it or not, when you use the PS4 Controller through the Steam API, it’s exactly the same as a Steam Controller,” Bellinghausen says. “You make the exact same API calls, you only get actions, not inputs, and the [API] takes care of everything.”
Using a PS4 controller on a PC can be a little cumbersome currently, since it requires third party applications such as Joy2Key to map keyboard and mouse support and DS4Windows to emulate an Xbox 360 controller. Valve chose to add native support for the PS4 gamepad first because it has “a lot of overlapping functionality with the Steam Controller,” due to the gyro sensors and touchpad in the DualShock 4.
“Also, existing native support for the PS4 controller on the PC is a bit weak.” In this case the platform itself “is communicating directly with the device so everything that’s nice and reliable,” Bellinghausen says.
Valve plans to add support for other gamepads in the future, though no plans were announced at this time.