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
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?
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).
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
- 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”.
Thanks, I’ll try fiddling with it. I’m busy as hell and don’t have much time to play so I haven’t even checked the in game settings to see if it’s enabled. I’ll keep poking around. Thanks for quality reply.
Thanks […] Thanks for quality reply.
You’re welcome 😊
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I usually turn off rumble anyway.
I modified the post’s title to try to account for comments like yours 😜:
PSA: If [
you are experiencing no][your] controller rumble [isn’t working] in Silksong, then try forcing Proton in the game’s properties on Steam
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.
Same here - I couldn’t believe how bad the sprint was, until I enabled Proton. Suddenly, the movement feels just as tight as it did in Hollow Knight!
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
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.
Is the native port a bad port then? ):
Native ports almost always have problems. It’s a big reason there’s such a large group that just say to use proton instead of wasting time on a native port.
Which both sucks cause having a good native port is rad. But also honestly the most realistic way to avoid these kinds of problems.
Not to mention that the native version is likely to be unplayable or perform much worse then it does now in a few short years because of changes to dependencies. Or quirks between distros.
Linux is a nightmare for native gaming long term.
Yeah for me imo Linux gaming just isnt there yet especially if you want to play games off steam, atleast in my experience, maybe I’m doing It wrong but yeah
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 :/
Yeah true, bar controller issue my game ran fine bar some frame drops but that just might be my hardware
Regardless my god this game is AMAZING is so big and all the content is such high quality
Ugh, it’s incredible. Hollow Knight has been one of my favourite games for years, and thus far my expectations for Silksong have actually been exceeded, not just met. Utterly loving it.
Me to man, but now I’ve hit the 20 hour mark like DAMN it’s starting to get hard lol, I beat hollow knight but now I’m doubting I’ll beat this game haha
