This bug has been around for a while. It’s apparently reliably repeatable if you know how to manipulate it, but I haven’t looked into it too much myself. For context, I’ve been playing Phas on and off since 2020.
They’re effectively visual novels with light gameplay mechanics for navigation or making some narrative path choices. At least, that’s how I felt about Until Dawn.
What’s frustrating for me is when the PC side cripples mixed-input entirely even though I just want mouse-look, gyro aim, and analog movement from my controller without any aim assist. (Looking at you, Destiny 2 and Halo.)
This sounds like it would mean charging Valve money for the privilege of using Valve’s own infrastructure every time a player installed a Unity game after a major PC upgrade/reinstall or after uninstalling that MMO they dumped every other game in their library try out.
Steam could probably bake a ban on software that uses installation trackers into their developer/publisher ToS, or ban the collection or transmission of Steam user data related to installations, or something similar.