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Emulating a DS4 controller (best case while using game mode)
Senten Nov 29, 2022
Hi there,

I am struggling to find a solution for emulating a Sony DS4 controller on the Steam Deck in order to use it within the Playstation Plus App for cloud game streaming.

Why would I want the Steam Deck controller to appear as a DS4? Many Playstation 4 games require the touchpad (either click or touch swipe) and Steam Input does not give you the opportunity to emulate this or to map a different button to that function (yet?). The only workaround, that I know of, is to use a real DS4 controller connected to the deck, which is a little inconvenient, as I would prefer to use the Steam Deck as a handheld.

In another scenario, where I do not wish to stream from the cloud, but from my local playstation (in-home), there is an application called "Chiaki" that (especially with "Chiaki4Deck") does exactly that -> I can map the Steam Deck's touchpads or any other input to the PS-Touchpad. Unfortunately Streaming from the Cloud through the local Playstation to the Chiaki-App on Steam Deck is a) a latency nightmare and b) Sony does not allow that and encrypts the stream, so that I can see the video output on my television but not on the Steam Deck (black screen). That is why I would need to use the Playstation Plus App on the Steam Deck, which works perfectly fine with the exception of the touchpad support.

Does anybody know a possible solution to this? Maybe there is some kind of middleware that I could install inside the same Proton-Prefix the PSPlus-App runs in (so that it only runs while I am using the PSPlus-App and not for any other Steam-game)?

Thank you in advance!

Regards,
Senten
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