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:

  1. Navigate to: Steam Library>Silksong>right-click>Properties>Compatibility
  2. Check “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool”
  3. 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
  1. 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

  • mat@linux.communityEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    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?

      • mat@linux.communityEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        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?

          • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            I never had an issue on hollow knight. Both on PC Linux and steamdeck. […]

            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?

            • Fecundpossum@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              Actually, I remembered that on PC at least (arch btw) it wouldn’t even launch natively, so I forced proton.

  • Fecundpossum@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I enabled proton 9.0-4 (steamdeck btw), and loaded up my save and let myself take damage a couple times, still no rumble. I honestly was so excited to play an hour yesterday that I didn’t notice if I felt any rumble or not but I don’t feel it now. Taking damage triggers it right?

    • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I enabled proton 9.0-4 (steamdeck btw), and loaded up my save and let myself take damage a couple times, still no rumble. […]

      Maybe Silksong unfortunately just has poor support for the Steamdeck at the moment. I found this which seems to support that theory:

      [1]

      I’m not sure if it’s possible on the Steamdeck, but have you tried enabling Steam Input?

      References
      1. Type: Application. Title: “Hollow Knight: Silksong Controller Layout”. Publisher: “Steam”. Accessed: 2025-09-05T08:14Z. Location: “Steam”>“Library”>“Hollow Knight: Silksong”>“Controller”>“View controller settings”.
    • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I enabled proton 9.0-4 (steamdeck btw), and loaded up my save and let myself take damage a couple times, still no rumble. […] Taking damage triggers it right?

      I tested it just now, and yeah there’s rumble on taking damage. There’s also rumble when hitting an enemy, when striking environmental objects, and binding (for clarity, that is not necessarily an exhaustive list; it’s just what I can recall at the moment).

  • Hazzard@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    This was also the solution to me for a weirder problem, running on Bazzite with an 8BitDo Ultimate 2, I was sprinting randomly, especially when cresting ledges, and the dash button was inconsistent.

    Extremely frustrating, the game feels significantly better with sprinting working as intended via Proton (I used GE-latest, but I assume it works with most proton versions). Would be nice to see the native version fixed, but proton is perfectly fine for now, and “external controller on Linux” is likely a lower priority bugfix.

    • HighlandCow@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I played it with an 8bit doe controller and when I pressed the sprint button my character would permanently look up lol

      I switched to windows 10 and it worked fine, I’ll try running the game on Linux another time

      • Hazzard@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Yes! I had that issue as well. I managed to sidestep that one by screwing with gamescope, scopebuddy, steam input, switching the controller to 2.4GHz, and restarting the game several times.

        Once I unlocked Sprint everything fell apart again, and that’s when I did some googling and realized I was running the native Linux version.

          • Hazzard@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            Seemed flawless besides the external controller issues. It’s already steam deck verified, after all, so hopefully this is a quick fix for them.

            But yeah, until that patch comes, I’ll be forcing proton :/