I’ve recently set up Steam on a fresh installation of Fedora 41, and while everything works fine with keyboard and mouse, my PS5 DualSense controller won’t function in games like Dead Cells and Windblown. The controller is recognized in Steam’s Big Picture Mode and I can use the touchpad, but the buttons and sticks are unresponsive in-game. I’ve checked various suggestions online:
– Some say the controller might be recognized as both a desktop input device and a controller, causing conflicts. I’ve disabled all Steam input settings, but the problem persists.
– Others mentioned issues with udev rules, but I have steam-devices installed, and the necessary udev rules files are present.
– I installed Steam using DNF, not Flatpak.
I also have a Windows installation where the controller works fine, so I’m fairly certain it’s a Steam or Fedora-specific issue. Any help would be appreciated!
3 Answers
I have a DualSense myself running on Fedora and encountered similar issues. Make sure you have steam-devices installed and also enable the Steam overlay. If a game struggles with your controller, it might be trying to support only Xbox controllers. If that’s the case, you could use xboxdrv to emulate an Xbox controller. Just set it up with your controller’s specific input path. Here’s a sample script you can tweak according to your setup!
Some games might not fully support PlayStation controllers. One workaround is to set Steam to interpret your DualSense inputs as an Xbox controller. You can find this option in Steam settings under the Controller settings. Make sure to enable “Steam Input for PlayStation controllers” — that could help.
I get that, but I know Dead Cells doesn’t support PlayStation controllers at all. Windblown should work with DualSense, but I’m having no luck with it either.
You should try downloading the latest Steam UDEV rules for the DualSense controller and placing them in `/etc/udev/rules.d`. Just make sure you’re doing it as root. After that, unplug and replug your controller. That should fix the input issues! Just to be safe, here are the links for the rules files: [60-steam-input.rules](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ValveSoftware/steam-devices/master/60-steam-input.rules) and [60-steam-vr.rules](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ValveSoftware/steam-devices/master/60-steam-vr.rules). Good luck!
Thanks for the suggestion! I followed those steps, but it didn’t work out for me. I put the files in the right place and even restarted Steam, but my controller is still not responding in games.
I’m not entirely convinced this is the issue since the game supports DualSense natively. But I will give xboxdrv a shot just to rule it out. Thanks for the tip!