By Sean Hollister
Publication Date: 2025-12-11 19:27:00
December 31st, 2025 is the deadline to save the Google Stadia controller. That’s less than three weeks from today — but there’s never been a better time. Last month, I discovered the controller is finally a first-class citizen in Steam and SteamOS.
The Stadia controller was originally designed to connect to your Wi-Fi network and remotely control games from Google’s cloud servers. But when Stadia shut down in January 2023, the company did an amazing job shutting down the service: it offered full hardware refunds and let you rescue the Stadia Controller by turning it into a generic Bluetooth gamepad instead.
When I flew to Valve headquarters in late October to see the Steam Machine, I asked Pierre-Loup Griffais if Steam would ever fully support the Stadia controller the way it’s supported so many other gamepads, letting you turn each of its buttons and joysticks into fully customizable control schemes. At the time, he said he thought the Xbox One wireless adapter might be a…
