u/Cyb0lic

When using the new Steam Controller, Steam will try to check whether a firmware update is available every time the controller is turned on, plugged in, or Steam is started, and on NixOS (and other distros), it'll fail every time.

The issue is that the Steam client uses hidapi for this communication, which isn't installed by default. Here's the fix, if you don't already have hidapi installed in systemPackages:

programs.steam = {
  enable = true;
  extraPackages = [
    pkgs.hidapi
  ];
};

UPDATE: This is no-longer an issue with the beta version of the Steam client. For now, the stable version still needs it.

EDIT: Removed redundant steam-hardware option - as vaibhavsagar pointed out, it's already set by programs.steam.