I like coop games to play with friends with the Steam Deck, but some of them doesn’t work fine.
I think that it’s time to do a list, maybe in this way something can change…

Examples

Let me explain the case example:

• You run a game on your steam deck to a dock station with 2 controllers
• The controllers work only:
  • On the menu - https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/83#issuecomment-1497567666
  • Only for the first player - https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/3375#issuecomment-1794487133
  • You need to map the controller to use a keyboard or doesn’t work
    • Shotgun King - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1972440/Shotgun_King_The_Final_Checkmate/
    • Madness: Project Nexus - https://store.steampowered.com/app/488860/MADNESS_Project_Nexus/
      • In this case there are controllers issues, I have reported them but they are working on the game itself a lot so doesn’t have so much priority

Explanation

So I have already found 2 games with (different) issues and:

• Brawlhalla identify during a match the first controller only when switching the priority and putting the native steam deck controller as last one
• Pang Adventures for the second player require the keyboard but after switching there are issues on both the devices on using the game and is not possible to play (also if the game support 2 controllers in the options and identify them in the menu)

Info

• this isn’t an issue of a specific dock station, but something software in the games that doesn’t detect rightly the controllers or proton that is not able to do something rightly. In my experience, it is the game itself that has issue, or it isn’t developed very savvy.
• doesn’t matter what is the controller, the fact is that the game don’t respond sometimes, for this list as the problem is that they are not identified at all.
• it is something that Valve can fix? Well I don’t know, but it is something that games should handle for this case, and it is difficult to get updates for a game not updated since years or there is a way to patch a specific game, or we need to find a workaround for every game.
• As today protondb doesn’t track this issue specifically as just asks for external controllers works, but this is a particular case.
• I am very sad to not be able to play to Pang Adventures with 2 players.