Overview
Ok so, I’m copying most of what I said in my review. Ever since I got the steam link I had a blast playing steam games from my couch but it would only work with games that had full controller support and even then it recognized my controller as a steam controller so it still said X instead of Square. Now, I wanted to use VirtualHere originally for PCSX2 and FSX but it didn’t work for PCSX2 because the controller didn’t catch on but my joystick worked. I found out how to fix this problem as I was trying to fix my PS3 controller because uninstalling Motioninjoy messed up my driver settings and it hit me. You have to manually load the driver when your controller is connected using VirtualHere! See the problem is that when you connect the controller to your PC and then use the controller emulation it picks up but not with VirtualHere, at least not right away. I found out that Motioninjoy isn’t super safe to use because of the internet connection (others said malware but I did not find anything malicious) so I switched to Better DS3 (I have heard of StarCandy or StarCrush something something but it did not work well for me and the original author discontinued support)… Anyways, here’s what you do!
Primary Setup (PC)
First, you need to have the Motioninjoy drivers and Better DS3, you’ll need to do this on your PC first before the steam link cause that’s easier to set up. If you don’t want to install motioninjoy that’s fine, you can find the drivers for this online (a quick google search will help you with that). You need to have a PS3 controller obviously, I prefer wired but you can work with wireless, I just have not done so.
Setting it up on your Steam Link
Next is the steam link part. So, you plug in the controller and your keyboard to steamlink, then start up the steam link and make sure that you set your PS3 controller under VirtualHere (from the SteamLink menu, before you start streaming) so the controller is connected to the PC and NOT the steamlink.
Now start streaming with the link (if you did everything right you will not be able to use your PS3 controller to move the mouse but you can use the keyboard/mouse you connected to the link for all that), you will realize that if you have Better DS3 open your controller may or may not pick up. If it picks up, you’re good and there shouldn’t be a problem but for the most of you you will not see it in the menu.
So this is where all the magic happens! If this is happening go to “Devices and Printers” under “Control Pannel” and find the PS3 controller, right click it and go to “properties“. Then go to “Hardware” and find where it says “USB Input“, click that and then click properties on the bottom right. Then you need to click “Driver” and then you must click “UPDATE DRIVERS“. Next (this part is super important), you click “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer” then click “Have disk“, after that browse to where the motioninjoy drivers are from where ever your installed it (there should be a x86 or x64 file in there and a inf file in that driver folder) and click the little inf file inside the driver folder and load that one. The controller WILL PICK UP meaning Better DS3 should work then and you can set up your controller emulation…
Conclusion
This is how I’ve been playing games that only support xbox 360 controller and not the steam controller using the steam link. You can play comfortably from your couch using this method, I’ve played emulator games too with it (haven’t figured out how to use Better DS3 specifically for this) and there are plenty of videos that explain how to do that. I don’t know if this works with other controller types or not but give it a try anyways, Better DS3 may not be the tool for you but using the method I gave you above should let you use your controller with virtualhere to play those games!
Share this guide with people you know if they’re having trouble!