Gaming: Valve Warms Up For The Steam Machine With A Client Update Bristling...

Pretty excited about this controller glyph thing, too.

We are an alarming way into 2026 already, and you know what that means: the precipitous decline of all of our institutions and the environment. Also, the soonish release of the Steam Machine, which will probably make all that other stuff go down a lot easier.

The Steam Machine's actual release date isn't known yet, but Valve's said it wants to get its living-room Linux box out in early 2026, so I reckon it's reasonable to say it's due out in the next few months. Anyway, this is all to say that I think the most recent update to the Steam client—itself essentially a packaging of a bunch of fixes that have been pushed to Steam's beta branch recently—is, stealthily, very much about prepping for Valve's black box.

I say this because Steam's January 21 client update practically vibrates with controller fixes and updates. Support for the Nintendo Switch 2 wired controller has been re-enabled, there are new settings for joystick responses, fixes for gyro aiming, and plenty else besides (find the full list down below).

You ask me, that looks like Valve getting its input ducks in a row ahead of the release of its living room box, though it's far from the only set of fixes wrapped up in this latest update. You can now filter your games by selected store tags (you know, stuff like 'psychological horror' and 'dwarf' you see on game pages) in the client, the betas UI has been made a bit slicker and more easily parseable, and various crashes have been kiboshed.

Oh, and rejoice, if you're trying to play Mafia 2 Classic or Football Manager 2012, then they'll no longer exit at random mid-game.

My personal favourite change is, ah, utterly meaningless, but is one of those things that has itched my brain for a good while now. If you connect a gamepad while you're in Steam Big Picture mode, then the glyphs displayed on-screen will now switch from keyboard to controller immediately, rather than waiting for you to make an input.

You either empathise with my glee at this entirely or think I am ridiculous. You would be correct in either instance.

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Source: PC Gamer