If you're playing Goat Simulator 3 on PC and you want to use a controller, then you might need to play it on Steam. It's an Epic Games Store exclusive, of course, but that isn't stopping a Coffee Stain Discord bot telling players to fire Goat Simulator 3 up on Steam to fix their controller woes.
As spotted by VGC (via NeoGAF), players on the official Goat Simulator Discord channel are being told to run the Epic launcher via Steam. Thanks to Steam Input, you've got a better chance of being able to use your controller of choice with Goat Simulator 3 this way. Obviously, it's not how Epic would want things, but it's pretty on-brand for Goat Simulator.
The bot's advice to players is to add the Epic launcher as a "non-Steam game", which you can do by clicking Games at the top and then "Add a non-Steam game to my library". Make sure your controller is plugged in, then fire up EGS via Steam and launch Goat Simulator 3. This should make the game recognize your controller.
If you're not familiar with Steam Input, it's a system within Steam that lets you use pretty much any controller you want with Steam games. If the controller isn't officially recognized, Steam will instead emulate a gamepad the game does support, meaning you don't need to fiddle with extra drivers or apps. It's a great system, and as Goat Simulator 3 proves, it's one Epic could probably do with adopting or copying itself.
Goat Simulator 3 was originally announced at Summer Game Fest 2022 with a trailer lampooning the classic Dead Island 2 announcement video. Despite the fact that it's called Goat Simulator 3, there is actually no Goat Simulator 2, which, again, is pretty on-brand for the madcap, irreverent fun this series offers.
You can pick up Goat Simulator 3 right now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Don't worry: if you're playing the game on consoles, you shouldn't have any problems with detecting controller hardware (unless, of course, you're trying to use an Xbox controller on PlayStation or vice versa).
