datacube

TL;DR below: How to force Steam back to an older version to restore the old "Big Picture" mode and update your Steam Controller's firmware to BLE, all thanks to one horny but knowledgeable Croatian furry.

A few weeks ago, Valve removed their old "Big Picture" mode from Steam. The old "Big Picture" mode had already been discontinued in favor of the new gamepadui "Big Picture" mode (i.e. what the Steam Deck comes with), but could hitherto still be forced by launching Steam with -oldbigpicture. While I actually like the new gamepadui more than the old "Big Picture" mode—besides the insane performance issues on my NVIDIA GPU, but there's ways around that—it is missing a few core features of the old "Big Picture" mode, most importantly: the old Controller Settings menu which allows you to update the firmware of your Steam Controller.

I like the Steam Controller. I like it a lot.
I think it is the best controller ever made. (The Xbox One controllers are great too. PlayStation controllers are hot garbage. Don't @ me.)

So of course, I bought six of them.

Okay Ian, so you like the Steam Controller, but come on, surely you can't like it enough to have six of them. Whatever are you going to do with six goddamn controllers?

Well. I was going to stop at four, but..

Myself only having two hands, you see, I can only use one controller at a time. Sometimes I can manage to forceconvince my wife to play with me, so that's two. Sometimes I'll have a friend over, that's three; another friend I have lent a fourth controller semi-permanently. That really ought to be enough for everybody—most games that allow local co-op do not allow more than four players simultaneously.

Ay, there's the rub: Since this one friend only comes over sometimes and very rarely brings his controller with him, it does not get updated often; in fact, at the time that Valve chose to remove their Controller Settings menu, it still hadn't gotten the firmware update that enables Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). As such, it is now incompatible with the device I want to use it now, an NVIDIA Shield Pro—but since Valve have removed the menu, updating the firmware is no longer possible. (There is an alternative method involving batch files which is an awful time, requires Windows, may leave your Steam Controller soft-bricked when it goes wrong, and woe betide you if you try to run it in a VM.)

Dauntlessly, I set forth to update this fourth controller. I end up soft-bricking it, but thinking I ruined it, I seek to replace it. I end up buying not one, but two new/used controllers from the same seller—again with outdated firmware and without BLE. Sigh. After I soft-brick one of them, I finally become irritated enough to boot Windows to Go from a USB drive and run the firmware update successfully. I also run it on the second controller.

And then I run it on the soft-bricked controller. Again, successfully. It now works again.

Sort of, since this blog entry is not titled "Ian gets stupid and buys too many controllers." You see, now BLE works (for some reason), but the original dongle mode (you can pair up to four Steam Controllers to a single USB dongle) no longer works. Which, you know, I don't really care about, since I'm happy with BLE. Unfortunately, another friend has agreed to buy one of my surplus controllers and he needs to use dongle mode. Well, shit.

But owoho, what's this? Steam user Wikarian99PL has posted a guide on how to forcibly downgrade your Steam version! Well, actually, Linux Wizard and Furry of Legend lightwo posted a guide on how to continue using Steam with Windows 7 after Valve stops supporting it on December 31st, 2023. Crucially, it contains a method of using an older version of Steam—normally, Steam is one of these applications that always force you to use the newest version. If you play your cards right, you can use this older version to restore full functionality to your Steam Controller.

Here's how to do it:

1. Quit Steam.
2. Force Steam to "update" to an older version of the software using:

   steam -forcesteamupdate -forcepackagedownload -overridepackageurl http://web.archive.org/web/20230531115543if_/media.steampowered.com/client -exitsteam

3. In the directory that contains local.vdf (~/.steam/steam/ here), create a file named steam.cfg with the following content:

   BootStrapperInhibitAll=Enable
   BootStrapperForceSelfUpdate=False

   This will prevent Steam from auto-updating on startup.
4. This "old" version of Steam is still new enough to default to the new gamepadui. However, it is old enough to still recognize -oldbigpicture, so start Steam using steam -oldbigpicture. Once you start Steam, switch to "Big Picture" mode.
5. Go to Settings > Controller Settings. Voilà!

From there, restoring full functionality is kind of straightforward: using a micro-USB cable, hit the Recover Steam Controller Firmware button to restore dongle connectivity. You can then update the firmware again (still in Controller Settings) to regain BLE connectivity.

Easy, right?

I don't know why Valve hates the Steam Controller—they built an excellent gaming handheld based on it, and now they seem to have but completely dropped it. Luckily, furries are here to save the day. Thanks, lightwo!