Valve Steam Controller Made the Company Lose $4 Million: Here's Why the Product was Discontinued

Urian B., Tech Times 03 February 2021, 11:02 pm

Valve's very own Steam Controller was said to be a quirky device where the company tried to combine the accuracy of a mouse along with the functionality of most traditional game controllers. While it was never really able to achieve the lofty goal, the studio that is behind Half-Life: Alyx probably was not able to predict that the Steam Controller would then cost them about $4 million due to damages.

Valve Steam Controller

According to an article by TechRadar, Valve has now been ordered to pay quite a princely sum to SCUF Gaming, as noted by VGC after a particular jury had found out that it had infringed a certain patent that was related to the said clickable back paddles of the Steam Controllers. The official patent for these controller paddles, or what is known as the back buttons, belongs to the SCUF parent company known as Ironburg Inventions, who then said that Valve was aware that its conduct had involved an unreasonable risk of the patent infringement but then decided to simply proceed to infringe anyway.

Ironburg then stated that it had previously gave a warning to Valve that they would be infringing its patent back in 2014, when the very first prototype of the said Steam Controller was initially revealed at the CES. However, the warnings were still not heeded.

Ironburg vs Valve

Speaking to a particular jury last week through Law 360. Ironburg's lawyer stated that Valve's own international disregard for this particular infringement is at the very heart of the said case and even went on to compare Valve's own actions with the classic story "David and Goliath'' where Goliath does just what Goliath wants to do.

Thomas Zilly, the US District Judge Thomas has agreed along and even found that all of the seven claims were in fact infringed upon by Valve. Valve's own defense was that the said Steam Controller paddles were actually demonstrably different compared to those that were patented by Ironburg, however, this was still deemed as not the case.

How Microsoft and Sony got by

For those that are still wondering how Microsoft's own Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 still has not fallen foul based on the same judgements coming from the court, this is because Microsoft was able to license the patent coming from Ironburg Inventions. This means that it is most likely that Sony's own DualShock 4 Back Button Attachment was actually doing the same.

The Steam Controller was reportedly one of the very first controllers that had to use haptic feedback. This could stimulate the very feeling of spinning a particular trackball. The technology has previously been adopted by both Sony and Nintendo in both the DualSense controller and Joy-Con respectively. However, its functionality majorly focuses more on being able to simulate certain onscreen effects just like rainfall or even footsteps.

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Written by Urian Buenconsejo