Spark the Electric Jester 3 – How to Get Controller to Detect/Work

Fix for controllers not getting detected correctly.

Getting Your Controller To Detect/Work

The Issue

Your controller isn’t being detected and only keyboard keys are being detected.

The Fix

For whatever reason this game only will accept controls from the first controller it picks up.

In my case both Steam and Windows was seeing a 2nd generic game controller even thought I don’t have one plugged in at all. You can check this in Steam Big Picture mode’s controller settings and looking to see if it shows multiple devices at the bottom of the screen and/or in Windows via the start menu by typing in “set up usb game controllers” and seeing if it shows more than one controller.

If either of these are showing unexpected controllers (such as 2 axis 8 buttons, like in my case) then do the following:

  • Click the Windows Start Button or press the Windows key on your keyboard.
  • Type in device manager and click it to open it.
  • Click the drop down arrow by Human Interface Devices and look for a device called HID-compliant game controller.
  • Right-click HID-compliant game controller and select disabled device.

The game should now detect your controller. This shouldn’t have any impact to anything else, in theory, but if it does you just have to go back to device manager, right-click the device again, and enable it.

If for some reason this doesn’t work for you, your other option is to manually map keyboard keys to your controller via Steam’s controller configuration aka Steam Input, but this won’t be ideal because your joystick will essentially be mapped to 4 directions versus the precision/freedom an analogue stick offers. I’d suggest trying to find/unplug/uninstall whatever else may be being detected as a controller instead.

Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 4471 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

8 Comments

  1. God, this is unacceptable. I just want to play the freaking game but am forced to jump through ridiculous hoops just to get my controller to freaking work!

  2. There’s a dialogue called “Set up USB Game Controllers” and for me usually when i have the problem it’s cause the wrong device is registered as my main default controller.

  3. You may also need to disable HID-compliant consumer control devices and HID-compliant vendor-defined devices. In my case the culprit was probably a USB foot pedal and I accidentally disabled my logitech mouse special functions, but I finally got it working now. Open up setup USB controller in Windows and watch if the 2 axis 8 buttons controller re-appears when re-enabling devices one by one.

  4. ever since ive done this fix my Steam Link touch controls dont show up on my android phone. i tried uninstalling and reinstalling to fix but the screen is always lacking even the steam button. yes the touch controls are enabled.

  5. I’ve only got one controller connected and it doesn’t register at all in game. I thought it was a problem with my controller but i checked it on other games and it’s not.

  6. There’s a dialogue called “Set up USB Game Controllers” and for me usually when i have the problem it’s cause the wrong device is registered as my main default controller.

  7. You may also need to disable HID-compliant consumer control devices and HID-compliant vendor-defined devices. In my case the culprit was probably a USB foot pedal and I accidentally disabled my logitech mouse special functions, but I finally got it working now. Open up setup USB controller in Windows and watch if the 2 axis 8 buttons controller re-appears when re-enabling devices one by one.

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