I verified that my controller’s rumble worked fine, yet I had no controller rumble in Silksong. I fixed it by forcing Proton 9.0-4 in Silksong’s settings:
- Navigate to: Steam Library>Silksong>right-click>Properties>Compatibility
- Check “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool”
- Select “Proton 9.0-4” from the dropdown.
It seems that Silksong has inherited the same controller rumble issue as Hollow Knight with the native build [1].
References
- Type: Post. Author: “Cobwebblocks”. Publisher: [“ProtonDB”. “Howllow Knight”.]. Published: ~2025-08. Accessed: 2025-09-05T06:41Z. URI: https://www.protondb.com/app/367520#q_spejhJmH.
No rumble on native version
Thanks for the info. That’s a shame, I really want to use native builds when available. Especially since Silksong runs so well. Is there any hope for a fix, even if unofficial?
I’m sure Cherry is going to be working rapidly on numerous bug fixes over the next month.
Despite that, the game has been extremely stable for me so far. I currently have about 8 hours of playtime, and this controller thing has been pretty much the only bug/issue that I’ve encountered.
Yes, but OP makes it sound like the Hollow Knight issue is not fixed either. I didn’t even know HK had rumble, but I def felt the Silksong haptics when I played it at Gamescom. I wonder how we can make Team Cherry aware of this, or whether they are already aware?
I never had an issue on hollow knight. Both on PC Linux and steamdeck. Might be an older issue?
I’m not sure what the exact replication bounds are for the bug; maybe your configuration simply doesn’t experience the issue? Or perhaps you inadvertently configured Steam to force proton somewhere?
Actually, I remembered that on PC at least (arch btw) it wouldn’t even launch natively, so I forced proton.
For reference, the source that I cited was a report from last month [1]. Also, I personally verified that, in Hollow Knight, controller rumble worked with Proton enabled, and didn’t work with it disabled.
References
Maybe, but, given that the same issue exists in Hollow Knight [1], I think it’s possible that it may remain, at least for a while.
References
Out of curiosity, how come?
I work at a game studio that provides Linux-native builds of our game. I don’t speak for them but in my opinion this gives us an opportunity to take advantage of Linux features such as better input systems, performance, dev tooling, and in the future maybe APIs like Wayland. While the Windows build does work via Proton, it’s limited to what Microsoft allows us to do with the Windows API. We also have to use a non-standard-compliant compiler (msvc) and overall maintaining a Windows build damages code quality, performance, dev speed, and end user experience. Our Linux userbase is already small enough, imagine if all our players started using the Proton version. It’d become impossible to justify spending as much time on the Linux builds as we do, and they would probably stop being available. So, although I see WINE and Proton as a net positive, I fear it will slowly kill Linux development and eventually all games will be limited 100% by what MS decides, despite technically playing them on a free platform.
Yeah, proton is a bit of an odd dual edged sword like that. Obviously the dream would be the Linux market share getting large enough that it’s a no-brainer to focus on that version and make it as excellent as possible, and proton is essential for that, but at least for now, proton is so good that it makes it hard to justify a native version.
If you can’t maintain a high standard of excellence for your Linux port, savvy players will just use your Windows version through proton anyway, because it’s already a high quality port. Easy to understand why many studios forego a native Linux version altogether.
You’re welcome 😊