Wireless. Keyboard. (And mouse, if you want it).

But then I need to leave that keyboard and mouse somewhere and it won't be as convenient as picking the controller that's already there. Plus I need this so sporadically that when I do they will be out of battery and it will be much more of a hassle. Plus I already have the controller in my hand, so being able to just have a mouse to click on a launcher or arrow keys to select an entry in GRUB or something similar is just so convenient. For a long time I had a KB+mouse plugged to it, but since I got the OG steam controller I haven't needed to.

you don't understand because I do have a Steam Deck and it's connected to my TV most of the time but, unlike you, I have a wireless kb+m (it's what I'm using to type this).

Therefore you don't care about that use case.

the controls on the device don't work in desktop mode.

They do work, just not as a controller, but you can use the device to navigate KDE and do stuff even without steam opened. Which is precisely the point, if they worked as a controller they would be useless to control the desktop.

Steam is using 900MB of RAM whether you actually need to use steam or not. That sucks. I just want to use the controls on my device. Proper drivers can achieve that without all of the unnecessary Steam bloat.

You might be exaggerating on the memory usage there, but I do get your point. It is a valid point like I said, but no, proper drivers can't achieve that because controllers have less buttons than the steam controller and you would lose on the ability to use it as KB+Mouse which you're not understanding is a feature lots of us want.

Steam input is a component of the Steam client and is only tied to it because Steam wants it to be.

Yes, but why would steam decouple them? That only incentives people not to use Steam which is their source of money.

I don't know why this is so hard to understand for you, or why you're defending it.

I understand that, and I also understand that Valve is a for-profit corporation so they won't do something that loses them money. You might as well ask why they don't allow to use their cloud to store random files without having to buy the games from them.

It's not like this arbitrary limitation is benefiting anyone other than Steam.

Yeah, I agree, but it's Steam software, it's meant to benefit Steam. What a weird argument to make, does GoG galaxy has features that benefits someone other than GoG?.

The appeal is the device's capabilities, not its software limitations.

And with the way that Valve went the capabilities are still there without steam, if they had gone the route you wanted to it would be even more tied to Steam just like how other controllers require their own software to map extra buttons and such. The way they made it it's trivial to write a driver that takes it behave like you want to, going the other way around is not. Maybe have a read on how drivers are written, it might give you a better idea on why this was done on this way.

Of course it'd be a weird ask, but I have no idea where this is coming from. That's not what I'm asking for.

The previous paragraph you're literally complaining that SteamInput is bound to steam. What are you asking for if not for SteamInput to be released as a separate thing?

Here my friend, is where you're answering why Steam forces Steam Input to be a part of the client.

Yes, precisely.

Who is even asking for this??? xD I'm just saying that they don't need to bundle it with the Steam client.

I'm, and most people who bought the OG controller too. Let me ask you something, in your ideal version of the controller, when you plug it in without steam, what input should the trackpad give you? What about the back buttons? What about the grip and other touch sensors?