A hobbyist has succeeded in running the classic text adventure Zork directly on the 2026 Steam Controller’s internal processor, showing that Valve’s controller can be repurposed as a small programmable device rather than merely an input peripheral. The achievement matters because the controller’s firmware appears to lack cryptographic signing, potentially allowing enthusiasts to replace it with their own software.

The work relied on accessing Valve’s internal firmware-updating tools and flashing custom code to the controller’s Nordic nRF52833 chip. However, the experiment is risky: the developer previously bricked the controller and needed to open it, solder to debug pads and use a Raspberry Pi Pico to restore the original firmware; they also reported losing analogue controls after a full erase. The controller’s firmware image is roughly 350,672 bytes and uses a CRC-32 integrity check rather than encryption or a digital signature.