Elden Ring Controller Not Working On PC? Here’s The Fix That Worked For Us

After writing about the controller issue in my impressions post, I then shared that post in a comment to the “Elden Ring” review thread on the Games subreddit. One user there, /u/darthyoshiboy, drew my attention to an ongoing problem in some Bandai Namco PC games where those titles will only recognize one x-input device at a time – even devices that are incorrectly designated as x-input devices – often at the expense of an actual controller. In short, the game will think that the x-input device it has detected is the controller you want to use, which means that your actual controller won’t work in-game.

That comment prompted me to search through my device manager for any devices that might be masquerading as x-input devices, and while I didn’t find any, I did discover that Steam was detecting a vJoy device alongside my Xbox Wireless Controller when I popped it into Big Picture Mode.

The software vJoy is described by its creator as an open source virtual joystick driver, and at this point, I don’t remember exactly why I had it installed. Still, that description and the comment I received on Reddit was enough to suggest that maybe vJoy was causing my problems in “Elden Ring,” so I uninstalled it, restarted my computer, and sure enough, my controller started working in-game.