Despite the fact it looks like an angry owl, Valve’s Steam Controller is certainly eager to please through its versatility. Its tweakable custom control schemes are all well and good, but now The House that Freeman Built have gone one step further by releasing the pad’s computer aided design geometry into the wild – or ‘CAD’ to us cool kids. Free to use under the Creative Comms license, it means talented PC gamers everywhere are now welcome to redesign the look of the controller or add extra functions to the polarising pad.
Before Valve started making controllers that look like Hedwig, they once made something called ‘videogames’. On that note, read up on the best PC games you can buy.
Providing you contact Valve for permission before you start tinkering away on that gizmo sat by your rig – and know your away around 3D print files – the freshly unleashed Steam Controller CAD geometry opens the doors to all sorts of pad-fiddling.
Valve have released a Dropbox link stuffed with all manner of Native Modelling, eDrawings and Creo Express files to ensure budding modders have all the tools required to tinker with the Steam Controller. And if you’ve got a hardware-related question for the Half-Life developer, ping ’em a mail at [email protected].
It’s unclear how open Valve are to truly radical redesigns, but it’d certainly be nice to see modded Steam Controllers pop up with traditional analog sticks, instead of those somewhat awkward trackpads.
You can buy the controller for around $50/£40 on Steam now. If you’re also a fan of tactical alien slaughter, you can save 40% on Valve’s pad with this last chance XCOM 2 offer that ends March 28th. Still, if it’s all the same to you Gabe, I’ll stick with my Xbox One controller for my sofa-based PC gaming needs.