Try this
You need xboxdrv to make it work. You'll have to start it each time you want to play.

Hey @GeorgeMD , i tried it
sudo rmmod xpad && sudo xboxdrv --silent didn't fix it for me. Although xboxdrv detects my pad, the game won't.

Xbox one controller works flawlessly, even in the menu, if you use x360ce. Download the 32bits version (juste google it), copy x360ce.exe in the game folder. Open x360ce.exe with your xbox one controller plugged in. It should configure itself automatically. Click on the "Options" tab in x360ce, then select "Compatibility" Hook Mode under "Input Hook" section. Then you're good to go, exit x360ce, saving settings, and launch the game. The game will recognize your controller as a xbox 360 controller now, and everything's gonna work normally.

@kisak-valve 4.2-2 regressed over 3.16-8. Keys presses freeze the game.

Xbox one controller works flawlessly, even in the menu, if you use x360ce. Download the 32bits version (juste google it), copy x360ce.exe in the game folder. Open x360ce.exe with your xbox one controller plugged in. It should configure itself automatically. Click on the "Options" tab in x360ce, then select "Compatibility" Hook Mode under "Input Hook" section. Then you're good to go, exit x360ce, saving settings, and launch the game. The game will recognize your controller as a xbox 360 controller now, and everything's gonna work normally.

Thanks @peterson432 for your reply, i have tried running https://github.com/x360ce/x360ce/ in a clean 32bit prefix without success w/ dotnet 472, Wine 4.5 protonified. It failed. I tried as dinput.dll as well without hook success. Are you sure you're meaning to run it on Linux ? :D

Hello @Bumbadawg, with Proton 4.2-2, please add PROTON_LOG=1 %command% to the game's launch options, reproduce the regression, and drag and drop the generated $HOME/steam-$APPID.log into the comment box.

Hello @kisak-valve, so 2 things.

• 1. This is the launch log with attempts to skip intro videos, stuck at "press start" screen, i then ALT+F4. NB: i tried with overlay disabled and controller forced off, same result.
• 1. My steam controller isn't detected when using an XBOX configuration, nor my XBOX360 controller. Only keyboard bindings work. Previous post above mentions x360ce but i couldn't get it to work even with a new 32-bit prefix.

@peterson432 @kisak-valve

Workaround for xbox360 controller to work with Split-Second:
(NB: using Steam beta with Proton 3.16-8, change accordingly)

1. Install x360ce.exe dependencies:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 && sudo apt install -y libSDL2-2.0:i386
sudo apt install -y wine-development # to get winecfg
sudo apt install -y winetricks

1. Plug in your controller
   (i'm using Steam controller with game input set as xbox360 but it can be a regular xbox360 gamepad)

2. Download and start x360ce.exe

# set up env variables
export WINEPREFIX=~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/297860/pfx
PROTON_V="Proton\ 3.16\ Beta"
BIN_PATH=~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/${PROTON_V}/dist/bin

# install dotnet 4.0 for x360ce.exe
winetricks -q dotnet40 && eval ${BIN_PATH}/wineserver -k

# download and start the only working x360ce.exe version with wine.. (later ones won't)
# found at https://sourceforge.net/projects/x360ce/files/x360ce.App-2.1.2.190.zip/download
cd ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/SplitSecond/
wget https://iweb.dl.sourceforge.net/project/x360ce/x360ce.App-2.1.2.190.zip -O x360ce.zip && unzip x360ce.zip && rm x360ce.zip
eval ${BIN_PATH}/wine x360ce.exe

1. Generate config with xinput_1_3.dll

• generate x360ce.ini: YES
• generate xinput_1_3.dll: YES
• new device detected: cancel.
• in the preset scroll down list, select: Controller (Xbox360) > Load > Save.
• in the tab options, select hook mode "compatibility".
• close window: accept to save changes.

1. Force the prefix to load .dll
   winecfg (dismiss the message, unable to find runtime)
   In libraries tab, add xinput1_3, OK

2. Start Split/Second, (dismiss the message, unable to find runtime)
   Now you should be able to control the game with your gamepad.

Game crashes on startup with Proton 7.0-2 (and currently Experimental): steam-297860-proton7.0-2.tar.gz

It works with Proton 6.3-8 using a gamepad (Xbox 360 controller), but if you use the keyboard for anything (like typing the profile name) it hangs for a few seconds for every key pressed.
steam-297860-proton6.3-8.tar.gz

Specs:

• O.S: Manjaro
• Kernel: 5.15.38 (fsync patched)
• GPU: GTX 970 4Gb (Driver: 510.68)
• CPU: Ryzen 7 5700G

There's quite a lot of discussion online about the level of controller support for this game, but I wanted to document the result of my testing:

• On the Steam Deck, with the Steam version of the game launched from game mode the Deck controls work just fine with Proton 9.0-4. No special setup at all - it works out of the box. The displayed hints for menu navigation are all keyboard keys, but I understand that's just how the game is, and joysticks + buttons work fine both in the menus and in a race.
• Using Proton Experimental instead (as of 2024-12-26) and the deck controls don't work at all. i.e. there appears to be a regression.

@asb Thank you for the report! We have looked into this game and found that unfortunately the behavior on Experimental with controllers that can be tested on Windows (so not the deck controller itself) matches the behavior on Windows. The game has bad controller support which is a bummer :(. We have not yet decided how to proceed since the changes we made in Experimental are "correct" but we hate breaking games if we can help it. We kept the changes out of Proton 9.0-4 so that folks can still use their controllers with that version :) Thank you for reporting the deck behavior specifically - we will make sure to take that into account as well.

I was playing this game (perfectly) on my Deck with default Proton 9 but it didn't work out of the box on my AYN Loki Mini Pro with Chimera OS, I guessed it was something Deck-specific, so what I did was simply to disable Steam Input for this game and it recognized my controller as it should.

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/2257#issuecomment-3242977710

In the above screenshot, the gray etching can be clearly seen.

@blaine12100 the game is rendering fine on my end with my RX 9060 XT and 4060M, so it's possible an intel specific issue and you should consider reporting it here https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues

The controller detection issue is happening again.

It has something to do with the latest Proton version regressing something new.
Running the game in 9.0.4 yields no controller issues, but anything after still has it. Something to do with the game running a Microsoft DirectX script before launch.

Could somebody look into this?

@SecularSteve Unfortunately the problem is the game itself. On Windows, most controllers (Xbox1, PS4/5) do not work with the game at all (either with Steam input enabled or disabled). More controllers used to work with Proton because we were incorrectly reporting many of them as Xbox360 controllers. Many games now have individual support for different modern controllers, so we do not want to do that and we entirely removed the code which was hardcoding the controller info for the Xbox360 as the only controller.

Since I suspect the game is not going to update, you can take advantage of older Proton versions to play the game with your modern controllers, which is better than what you could do on Windows :D

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/2257#issuecomment-3719175283

So the best we can hope for is a mod or something?

Might be easier a bit considering someone managed to integrate the ASI loader into the game in order to reactivate it's online funcionality:

https://github.com/d-zoar/coordinator_SS

Though it's not running on Linux unfortunately. Already reported it.

@SecularSteve Yep - I think basically you'd just need something to report an older XBox controller VID/PID from a controller that actually works with the game on Windows, instead of the VID/PID of the controller you are currently using. I am 98% sure the VID/PID from the Xbox360 controller would do it.

@SecularSteve Yep - I think basically you'd just need something to report an older XBox controller VID/PID from a controller that actually works with the game on Windows, instead of the VID/PID of the controller you are currently using. I am 98% sure the VID/PID from the Xbox360 controller would do it.

2 months later, and I'm still nowhere with this.
All I can confirm for sure is that every time I switch back to Proton 9.0.4., a DirectX Install Script runs.

@SecularSteve Bummer :( We are not planning to update Proton 9.0-4 (except as necessary to keep it functional for cases just like this :D) so I would recommend just using Proton 9.0-4 for now. It is an unfortunate game bug that they didn't think to add broader support for future controllers... I'm sure at the time they thought they had all the bases covered because the xbox-360 controller worked haha.

Just want to add my working config for those who are still interested in this title. Newer versions of x360ce v3 generate a xinput1_3.dll that the game does not want to recognize.

Download x360ce.App-2.0.2.163.zip
and xinput_r444_x86.zip
extract them and keep the .exe and the .dll together (ideally in the splitsecond install folder).

Use winetricks (or protontricks) to create a new prefix for x360ce and then with winetricks install DLLs

• dotnet35 (required to launch the app) and
• riched30 (required to display forms and/or generate the ini correctly).

Then again in this new prefix install

• a full copy of directx9 redist at least 2010 or newer (not just the directx9 DLLs)

Run x360ce.exe in this new prefix with proton (I used proton 10).
In the options tab select InputHook Mode "Compatibility" (this includes the VID/PID hook mentioned above).
In the Controller 1 (and 2) tab select "Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver for Windows" at the bottom and Load.
In the Advanced tab under each controller UNCHECK "Pass Through" and Save.

Make sure the newly created x360ce.ini file and the xinput1_3.dll file are in the folder beside SplitSecond.exe (this also works with the 60fps patch). Then use winetricks (or the command below) to launch winecfg in the wineprefix used for the game (not the new one created for x360ce) to exclusively load this dll.

export WINEPREFIX="/your/split/second/wine/or/proton/pfx"
export WINEESYNC=1
"/your/copy/of/Proton 10.0/files/bin/wine" winecfg

In the Libraries tab, add xinput1_3.
Edit and choose Native (Windows) only

The controllers should now be working in the menus and splitscreen. Make sure to select your cars normally by using the controller and not the keyboard. This tells the game which input method to use for which player. I've tried many other alternative methods that usually resolve the issues above but only this specific method seems to work for this game.

@SecularSteve Bummer :( We are not planning to update Proton 9.0-4 (except as necessary to keep it functional for cases just like this :D) so I would recommend just using Proton 9.0-4 for now. It is an unfortunate game bug that they didn't think to add broader support for future controllers... I'm sure at the time they thought they had all the bases covered because the xbox-360 controller worked haha.

UPDATE:

Latest Proton Experimental Finally fixed the regression.
In fact, it works even better than with 9.0.4 (in my opinion).

@SecularSteve Great to hear! We ran into more games with essentially the same game bug that were helped by faking an xbox-360 controller, so we (finally) officially added the hack in Proton ... which we'll then have to maintain forever since it is obviously not correct for upstream Wine, but worth it to see happy gamers :D Glad to hear the hack is working so well for you :)

@SecularSteve Great to hear! We ran into more games with essentially the same game bug that were helped by faking an xbox-360 controller, so we (finally) officially added the hack in Proton ... which we'll then have to maintain forever since it is obviously not correct for upstream Wine, but worth it to see happy gamers :D Glad to hear the hack is working so well for you :)

Jeez,
The way you made it sound, I feel like it's a burden to keep up or something.
Assuming this isn't exactly a permanent solution, I wish you the best of luck in finding one, or more alike problems to fix up.
Best of luck either way...
And thank you for your help, once again...