The engineers at Valve love a good easter egg, but I was still surprised to read that the Steam Controller will do a full-on Wilhelm scream if you drop it while playing. However, after having testing it, I'm happy to confirm that it does just that, as you can see and hear in the video above.

Interestingly, the sound emanates from the device itself rather than your computer speakers, relying on the haptic motors that provide the rumble - just like the chimes that play when it's turned on or off. My Moza R25 Ultra sim racing wheel base does the same trick to play a wide range of startup tones, but the fidelity of the Wilhelm scream here is pretty spot on.

Here's the sequence of events that worked for me to trigger the scream:

  1. Enter Steam Big Picture mode
  2. Turn off the controller
  3. Turn on the controller
  4. Drop it (onto something soft)

The Steam Controller is pretty robust, but I'd imagine that dropping it repeatedly even onto carpet won't be great for it, so do take care in trying this easter egg out.

[source reddit.com]