Important edit: The Steam Controller is not totally out of stock. They are toggling availability to limit orders. If you have not yet gotten one, continue checking the site.
Who all managed to get one?
Who’s with me in the “impatiently has to wait for them to return to stock” camp?
What excites you most about the Steam Controller?
That is what I know so far too. I think the original Steam Controller (I have one too) acted the same. Didn’t use it for long time. And no, my hope was I could use the controller without Steam in the background too. In example whenever I want to use an emulator like Yuzu or a set of emulators with RetroArch, I would also need to launch Steam in the background. And having Steam AND RetroArch at the same time is troublesome for my non Steam controller, as they get in conflict and I have to close Steam in example.
So that was a longer way of saying, no, I am not alright to run Steam in the background for stuff I am not playing in Steam.
In that case, definitely check out SISR if you want that functionality in Linux or Windows. It mentions emulators in particular as a use case. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything like it for Android which I saw you mention in another comment.
Good thing is, I don’t care about Android. I saw some user drivers too and they will most likely add support for the new controller. Maybe I use it, maybe not. At least I still have my regular gamepad and will just leave both connected. Guess there are worse problems to have. :D
Yeah, I’m not too worried in general. Valve devices tend to have pretty vibrant DIY communities grow up around them, both on the software and hardware side. I’m looking forward to seeing what 3D printed accessories exist in a few months myself.
And third party accessories are already created too, such as a stand for the controller acting as a dock. It’s the only one I have seen, so that’s why I mentioned it. And thanks to the replaceable parts, this will make it even easier for DIY people. I’m not much of hardware customization, but it’s always fascinating to see what others do.
I definitely don’t go into it as far as a lot of people do, but some customizations are too nice to ignore. The original Vive (basically Valve hardware in all but name) had a mod that swapped the straps for welding mask supports and added off-ear speakers much like the Index later got. That was absolutely a massive upgrade.