Valve continues to expand the range of controllers that can be used with Steam, adding support for Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons as part of the newest beta update.
Nintendo Switch Joy-Con support tops short list of changes in Steam Client Beta community update post (opens in new tab) for august. The post not only confirms that Nintendo Switch Joy-Con support has been added, but also notes that the support is for Joy-Cons “both individually as a mini-gamepad and combined in pairs.”
Support is currently only on the Steam Client Beta. To opt-out, you can do so in the ‘Account’ section of the Steam settings menu. Since the beta was released on August 4th, Valve re-released it on August 5th, hoping to smooth out any issues that were being experienced by those trying to connect controllers.
What a joy
Of course, not every Nintendo Switch owner likes the small, complicated Joy-Cons. If you fall into that camp, or are just trying to figure out how to fix the Joy-Con drift right now, you’ll be happy to hear that the more substantial Nintendo Switch Pro controller has been supported by Steam since its inception in 2018.
Even more recently than that – June (opens in new tab)in fact – Valve added support for the Nintendo Switch Online classic controllers collection to the Steam beta before pushing it to the main Steam client at July (opens in new tab). This collection includes the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, and Nintendo 64 wireless controllers. This latest beta notes that it also brings “improved support” for these controllers.
All in all, this means that Steam now has a pretty comprehensive support system for the official lineup of Nintendo Switch controllers. If Nintendo controller support isn’t your thing, Steam controller support is extensive and also includes the DualSense wireless controller and Xbox Elite wireless controller, among others.