When Valve first showed off the Steam Deck, there was a well-detailed Top 100 Factorio-worthy game right there. It makes sense: Steam Deck runs Linux, Factorio has its own build of Linux. Nothing to fiddle with then, it works great, and the low graphical requirements mean it should have a pretty good battery life. But anyone who has played Factorio can tell you that it is a game with a lot of hotkeys and a mouse, with a lot of clicks and skillful use of the mouse. This means you’ll have to do a lot of remapping and profiling to get everything running very smoothly on the Steam deck. The Wube Software developers are aware of the issue, and in a recent developer blog talked about some of the work they did to get Factorio to work with controllers.
“We are experimenting with providing proper controller support in Factorio; this will not only benefit Steam Deck, but also those who want to play the game more at ease with a controller. Working on the expansion is still a top priority for the team, and controller support is no easy task, so if it comes to Factorio, expect it much later in the year,” Vueb said.
It makes sense that any controller development would take a backseat to work on a really big expansion that would double the size of Factorio, but I have to say I’d like to play this expansion on Steam Deck if I can. Wube is currently working on a few other small fixes such as tweaking the UI to make the size work better on the smaller Steam Deck screen.
