* if you have multiple users on the same physical keyboard, you're very likely to run into the problem where the hardware won't actually register the keypresses simultaneously (some hardware even generates keypress events for keys you didn't actually press!).
* if you plug in multiple keyboards, most input event APIs drop the source index, and hotplug is even less supported. Also this is likely to break single-user-like use cases and sometimes hardware macros.
Slightly older (2021) steam post https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/30618... suggests better number depending on game genre. Although considering that whole point of that post is to encourage developers having better controller support, and suspicious category grouping and and qualifiers like "racing and skating games", "many sports and fighting games" and fact that some of those genres are often played with genre specific controllers I would take those number with grain of salt. From the other number of 48m players who have used a controller at least once with ~130m overall active monthly users less than 35% of players with a controller seems likely, considering that not every player from first category is regular active user. And from the same link only 10-15% controller sessions with multiple controllers. So maybe 3-4% with multiple controllers. Although actual number with multiple controllers might be slightly higher compared to session percentage, since many games act buggy with multiple controllers, so it's not uncommon to disconnect all the extra controllers while playing single player games.
From the controller friendly (but also keyboard friendly) PC games I have worked on, 10-30% of players using controller seems reasonable number.
It very much depends on how you define majority. Considering that 4/5 most played games on steam based on current player count are FPS (which on PC are almost exclusively played with mouse and keyboard), not surprising that the "daily gaming session" 10% number is skewed more towards the lower range of estimate. If you exclude FPS numbers are better but even then it's far from majority of PC gamers.
Interesting, thank you for finding that looks like I misremembered.
I would exclude rts and fps for the simple fact that those are made with mouse in mind on pc, but fps is challenging because they do work well with controllers on split screen (and you can't play an fps with just keyboard).
I think the good answer is in the stats, 35% of players connected a controller, that's a lot of controllers. There might be more, there might be some with multiple.
But it's a chicken-egg problem. People don't have multiple controllers because they don't make split screen games anymore, most of them require multiple consoles/pcs.
I follow the genre a lot since I want to play with my wife and my friends. It's mostly indie games with the exception of bg3/divinity original sin.
That does not sound accurate at all. I've rarely seen a PC gamer use a controller. In fact for many types of games mice are preferable. There's a few genres where controllers are always better but I find that's not the bulk of what PC gamers play anyway.
Sure but like... anyone in the PC gaming community would confirm. I used to read PC Gamer magazine a lot when I was younger, watch constant PC gaming setup videos, all of them included mice and keyboards. Almost none of them included controllers. I think there's a bias to the data used in your claim. My claim is not anecdotal based on just my own personal experience. It's based on my experience and about any content you can find about PC gaming out there.
I'm a PC gamer, have 8 controllers and have done none of the things you listed, except learning how to build a PC. I'm not saying it can't be like you described, but observation from your point of view (your life) is not a valid statistic.
Steam stats covers a lot of pc gamers, so we can and should be relying on that. 130M pc gamers is more than we can ever observe in life, and at least 48M of them have controllers
Yeah 48M is not the majority of 130M. All I was saying is there's NO WAY it's the majority. And having a controller and using it as your main input source are two different things. Plenty of PC gamers have controllers that they only use for games where they absolutely have to. Claiming that most steam users are using controllers is inaccurate. Extrapolating that out to saying most PC gamers are using controllers is even sillier because anyone who's using other platforms for gaming on pc that aren't steam, which haven't put a lot of effort into pushing controllers like steam has, are even less likely to use controllers.
As I reported, I could have misremembered, which I did (I remember valve did some research on it). We were discussing if it was reasonable to make split screen games and it was brought up multi keyboard input, I reported controller should be used, hence the stat.
Steam just proved that at least 48M people have controllers on PC, that is a lot of controllers!
As for non platform users, we literally have no information on them and no way to gather such information, so for the purpose of this discussion, they don't exist. Being an edgecase cuts both ways (yes, steam is that big)
I'm not sure if you read anything between the lines, I remember it was 50% of steam player have a controller, I remember wrong and it's 33%, that's about all I have to say on the stats.
I would not recommend using a keyboard for split screen gameplay, we have a better alternative, especially with the loss of mouse.
From my personal perspective, the keyboard is always a poorly optimized gaming peripherals, it's the mouse that makes a difference. The keyboard is useful when jumping into chat, but that's about it.
For a while there were those poor quality gaming boards, made more sense than a keyboard and had an analog stick included, these disappeared from the market sadly, but made more sense
It would be quite amusing if only the majority of 'steam users that provide feedback' are controller users, while most MKB users don't provide feedback.
N-key rollover is pretty standard for higher-priced gaming keyboards, but it's still far from universal.
For example, the average laptop keyboard or membrane keyboard is unlikely to have it - and that's exactly what people will be playing casual splitscreen games on.
Clarification: it's standard for gaming keyboards, which tend to be more expensive. It's not like that cheaper gaming keyboards don't have it (even ~30 USD keyboard has one, if it's advertised as a gaming keyboard).
* if you have multiple users on the same physical keyboard, you're very likely to run into the problem where the hardware won't actually register the keypresses simultaneously (some hardware even generates keypress events for keys you didn't actually press!).
* if you plug in multiple keyboards, most input event APIs drop the source index, and hotplug is even less supported. Also this is likely to break single-user-like use cases and sometimes hardware macros.