A few fixes have been implemented with the new update

Jan 15, 2016 10:05 GMT  ·  By

A new Steam beta update has been released by Valve, and it brings a few fixes for the Steam Controller and some of the other components.

The Steam developers have been pretty active in the past few weeks, and it looks like they are still working to improve the Steam Controller functionality. As it stands right now, any user that bought a Steam Controller still needs the Beta branch of the client, if they want to use it as they should.

Valve is still pushing for the adoption of these new controllers, but the developers have to continue to improve them beyond what they are capable right now. The fact that you need to use the Steam Beta to get the best experience is still a problem, but that’s probably going to be remedied soon, when the stable branch of the application will be upgraded as well.

What’s the latest with Steam Beta

Unlike the previous Steam Beta update, which was a little bit more consistent, the latest version is not all that big, but it does feature a couple of important features. Developers figured that sometimes the system can lock up, and users will hit Control-Alt-Del. Returning the control of the keyboard is an important aspect.

“If Steam loses its ability to send input due to UAC/Control-Alt-Del prompts, controller will now attempt to drop into its default state to allow interaction with these dialogs and resume normal configuration once workable state is re-established. The controller will beep when entering/exiting this mode,” is noted in the changelog.

Also, when the user exists from Steam, the Controller now returns to its default 'lizardmode' Mouse/Keyboard state, the recording of 5.1 audio on various system configurations has been improved for In-Home Streaming, and the UI for SteamOS has been updated to accommodate the option to pair Bluetooth devices.

You can download Steam for Linux right now from Softpedia, but please keep in mind that you need to select Beta from Preferences to get this update.