How to Fix Controllers Not Working in Baldur’s Gate 3

Are you trying to get a controller working for Baldur's Gate 3?

by Gordon Bicker
Image: Larian Studios

Baldur’s Gate 3 has been capturing the gaming community’s attention for a long time, and many players prefer to play with a controller which can be an issue if PC players encounter their controllers not linking to the game. This article will take you through everything you need to know about how to fix controllers not working in Baldur’s Gate 3.

How to Play Baldur’s Gate 3 With Controller

In order to play Baldur’s Gate 3 with your controller you need to hook up the controller via a cable (or wirelessly) to your PC/Laptop. I recommend making sure that in the “Bluetooth and Devices” settings on Windows that the controller shows up on that page before proceeding. Sometimes on the Devices settings, controllers will appear as “Unknown Device” but this is still connected up correctly.

Related: Is Baldur’s Gate 3 Steam Deck Certified? Answered

When you can see the controller hooked up and active, just launch Baldur’s Gate 3, and the game will let you switch to the controller. You can also go into the interface options within Baldur’s Gate 3 to then switch the main input mode to Controller so that you aren’t able to suddenly use the controller and mouse/keyboard at the same time — which would be a bit less than ideal.

Controller Not Working in Baldur’s Gate 3 Easy Fix

If you have done all of that and you are still finding your controller to not work in any way within the game, then there are other steps you can follow. These steps aren’t officially from the development team but they are excellent to troubleshoot the issue in the meantime because of what Reddit users have found. I have written the steps below for you to follow along with for the Steam easy fix.

  1. Navigate to your main Steam Library, this is where all your games are.
  2. From there, right-click on Baldur’s Gate 3.
  3. Click “Properties” and then “Controller”.
  4. Where there is a box that says “Use Default Settings”, click that and then click “Disable Steam Input”.
  5. Now follow the “How to play” section above in this article again making sure your controller is connected to the PC/Laptop. Launch Baldur’s Gate 3 and you should find the issue has fixed itself.

Related: How to Remove Version Number in Baldur’s Gate 3

It is likely that Larian Studios have seen a few players having issues with the controller support so there is potential that the development team may look into the issue soon but it is unknown at the moment. When you have gotten your controller working again with the game, you can get back to playing with friends in the beautiful world that awaits you.

- This article was updated on August 4th, 2023

About The Author

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Gordon is a contributing writer for Attack of the Fanboy, a Games Design (BA) Honours student, and a Video Game Ambassador. He has been writing at AOTF for over a year and a half, with four years of games writing experience for outlets like Green Man Gaming. When he's not busy, he'll no doubt be experiencing games, writing poetry, playing guitar, adventuring, or happily starting a new Skyrim playthrough! As an avid Final Fantasy XIV player, he also hopes that you'll gain a warm feeling from his community stories. Gordon has reported on Fallout 4 and Destiny 2, whose favorite genres include action RPGs, MMORPG's and First Person Shooters but is always experimenting with many other types of games.