Yeah, I’ve been playing lot of 2d platformers on my Deck or button mashers like the Yakuza collection where I’m less likely to miss touchpads.

I use dual touchpads for games like Doom Eternal, Left 4 Dead 2, Spin Rhythm XD, The Finals, etc.

I’d be sad to lose the left track pad since I use it for movement in games like Dying Light and Finals.

Touchpad is great for turns. Example here of 180 turn demo with my Steam Controller. And I use that with gyro to play games like Doom Eternal, Left 4 Dead 2, Spin Rhythm XD, The Finals, etc without aim assist.

Some functionality that keeps me using the Steam Controller has been touchpads for movement, quick gadget swapping with touchpads, quick 180s/gyro activation with touchpads.

I use it to play games like Doom Eternal, Left 4 Dead 2, Spin Rhythm XD, The Finals, etc.

Sadly I don’t find myself doing the same on the Steam Deck opting for the joysticks instead, since I don’t find the placement, smaller size, square versus circle, and flat surface versus concave offering the type of consistency that I use the touchpads for on the Steam Controller. It feels more a touchpad appropriate for slow paced games or just desktop navigation than optimal for the way I use the touchpads on the Steam Controller. And I don’t see Valve delivering on the touchpad end that I would like with the next Steam Controller with all the inputs it would be fitting in.

I’m the minority that wishes the controller would have the same layout for the touchpads with it being large, circular, concave, and in the same upper positions.

I use dual touchpads on the Steam Controller to play games like Doom Eternal, Left 4 Dead 2, Spin Rhythm XD, The Finals, etc.

But, on the Deck I did not find the touchpad good for those games due to the shape, size, and placement so it turned out as being as useful as the dualsense with it becoming more a joystick controller than a touchpad controller I wanted to use in the same way I use the Steam Controller. Been hoping for years for a proper Steam Controller with upgraded gyro and 2 additional grips, but looks like it’ll never happen even if Valve came out with a new controller when it comes to a dual touchpad controller I want to use. Would be more a xbox/sony controller alternative.

Do you encounter the same issue in desktop mode too?

I tried it on my steam deck and was able to apply my custom template to another game in the normal Steam Deck mode so I wonder if maybe the config is corrupted? Maybe make a simple test config template to check out if it applies to other games is worth trying before making your main config from scratch again.

Simplest way I think is saving the controller layout as a template and then you should be available to see in all games when you go to templates.

I do this for the Steam Controller where I saved a general template to use across games so I don’t need to reconfigure every single part from scratch.