This custom Steam Machine faceplate doubles as a Steam Controller charging stand

Less than two months after the Steam Machine launched, a community member has already built a faceplate that doubles as a charging stand for the Steam Controller — and it's surprisingly clean.

Reddit user NefariousnessWhole25 shared the design on the Steam Machine subreddit. The faceplate holds the Steam Controller's charging puck in place using friction, with a small cutout routed for the USB-C cable so the wire doesn't poke out the top. The puck — a small disc bundled with the Steam Controller that handles both charging and PC connectivity — turns out to have magnets strong enough to hold the controller upright on its own, so an earlier shelf prototype wasn't even needed. The faceplate also works as a basic stand without the puck attached, though it looks a bit hollow that way. The creator says they're still putting on final touches and is open to conversations with Valve, Jsaux, or Dbrand if any of those companies want to talk about the design.

Valve released CAD files for both the Steam Machine and Steam Controller under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, which lets modders customise freely but blocks commercial sales. That open design philosophy is already paying off — this faceplate mod is a practical example of what happens when a hardware maker hands the community the tools to iterate. The Steam Machine itself remains expensive and hard to source, but the modding scene is clearly not waiting around.

One commenter summed it up as "slightly ugly, and insanely functional" — which the creator seems to take as a compliment. If Valve or a third-party accessory maker picks up the concept, a proper charging stand for the Steam Controller could become a real product down the line.