[Feature]: The new Steam Controller (2026) does not work when PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 is active

[sympathygecko]

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• I haven't found another open request for this feature.
• I have checked whether a system update already provides this feature.

Description

I have the new Steam controller which has been released in may this year. I noticed that the controller does not work correctly in games when PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 is set as a Steam launch command. Buttons on the back are not working, sometimes only one joystick is working and any other button on the controller is not responding to any input, etc. It differs from game to game.

As soon as I remove the PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 command the controller works as intended. All the buttons on the back working, the trackpads, etc. Same issue happens with GE Proton btw.

When I use Valve Hotfix proton I can set PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 and the controller works normaly with all button on the back, etc. But then I lose all the extras that cachy proton provides.

Justification

idk. I'm not a programmer and honestly I have no idea how these things work. Maybe when cachy proton is releasing a newer version that is based on a newer official Valve proton the problem gets fixed. Maybe not. Maybe it's a wayland problem and you guys can't do nothing about it. Just some oberservation I made while using the controller. A lot of people using this controller on Linux and will run into similar issues.

Risks

No response

References

No response

[loathingKernel]

This has been documented a million times by now, Steam Input doesn't work with winewayland.drv and needs workarounds, some of which are documented in this projects README and associated links.

When I use Valve Hotfix proton I can set PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 and the controller works normaly with all button on the back, etc.

Yes, because another very well documented difference is that Valve's Protons DO NOT INCLUDE winewayland.drv, the aforementioned environment variable does exactly nothing.

A lot of people using this controller on Linux and will run into similar issues.

My hope is that people will be better at reading documentation when that happens.

[BananaWorks07]

Try PROTON_USE_SDL=1

[BananaWorks07]

My hope is that people will be better at reading documentation when that happens.

Lol we can dream 😂

[Billli11]

Weirdly I am able to use controller with wayland without PROTON_USE_SDL=1(tested with PRAGMATA)

May be because I manually unset ENABLE_VK_LAYER_VALVE_steam_overlay_1 and remove gameoverlayrenderer.so from LD_PRELOAD when PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND is set?

Though I need to remove Desktop Layout or on screen keyboard keep popping up.

[powerofthe69]

My comment in this Elden Ring: Nightreign thread explains how to get Steam Input working under Wayland: ValveSoftware#8751 (comment)

[sympathygecko]

I tried all the methods mentioned in this thread. But they did not work for me. For now I run my game without the Wayland command. I guess it's up to Valve to fix this.

[S34NW]

I tried all the methods mentioned in this thread. But they did not work for me. For now I run my game without the Wayland command. I guess it's up to Valve to fix this.

If you want a solution while you wait, https://github.com/Alia5/SISR SISR works well for this use case.

[TWDickson]

It seems that Cachy's latest Proton Experimental (Version 11.0-20260601) and Valve's Proton Experimental fixed Steam Input, however HDR is now blown out with colour's appearing solarized and in-game calibration options not fixing it (at least in Overwatch 2). Despite what the docs say about automatic HDR detection OW2 requires the DXVK_HDR=1 flag to detect an HDR enabled screen.

These are my full overwatch launch options:
MANGOHUD=1 PROTON_ADD_CONFIG=wayland,hdr DXVK_HDR=1 PROTON_DXVK_LOWLATENCY=1 game-performance %command%

I've also added -steamos3 to the steam command options as it supposedly enables steam input through wayland, I am not sure if this is required for the experimental proton versions, but it didn't seem to do anything for the standard releases of proton.

[loathingKernel]

@TWDickson What's your compositor? Gnome? Automatic detection depends on the compositor providing accurate color information

Proton Experimental doesn't have winewayland so all of the config is ineffective. Also Proton-CachyOS doesn't support PROTON_ADD_CONFIG. I should probably work on adding that, but it needs to handle configuration options in some way.

[TWDickson]

Oh thanks for the correction, I've updated the launch options now, MANGOHUD=1 PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 DXVK_HDR=1 PROTON_DXVK_LOWLATENCY=1 game-performance %command% but if the Proton Hotfix and Proton Experimental don't do anything for wayland then it shouldn't matter. Steam Input is working, but HDR is still solarized.

My Compositor is KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland (KWin), running: plasmashell 6.6.5, kwin 6.6.5. AMD RX 6900 XT, Mesa 26.1.2, and Kernal 7.0.11-1-cachyos.

Edit one other thing, I've updated to the steam client beta in the hopes that it would fix the steam input issue.

[loathingKernel]

You can still disable HDR with DXVK_NO_HDR=1 but I suspect that's not what you are after.

[BananaWorks07]

Automatic HDR works for me in overwatch

[TWDickson]

Sorry folks I think I introduced some confusion into this. I thought there had been an update on the steam input into wayland issue, I didn't realize proton experimental wasn't a Wayland session so steam input worked and then I was trying to force HDR onto a X window which of course didn't work. Ultimately I'm trying to run games in Wayland for HDR and utilize steam input for the steam controller.