League of Legends players have discovered that the game now supports controller input. While the development feels like a hidden find, Riot actually announced it. The detail was buried deep in the dev blog accompanying the recent WASD input method’s Ranked release, and it’s only now catching the community’s attention.
How does League of Legends controller support work?
The controller support is automatically activated when players turn on the recently added WASD input mode. While for keyboard users, the mode enables movement using WASD keys (as is traditional in most games, particularly shooters), it also allows controller support in LoL. By default the following mappings are used:
- LT -> Q
- LB -> W
- RB -> E
- RT -> R
- X -> D
- Y -> F
- A -> Auto-Attack
- D-Pad Down -> Trinket
- Left analog stick -> Mouse cursor movement
The input method was first noted by popular League of Legends X account, SkinSpotlights, before it quickly made the rounds in the community. While workarounds, through controller mapping software, did exist previously, this is the first time the game has natively supported the feature. Notably, popular League of Legends content creator, BoxBox, famously played the game with a gamepad in the past to great success.
An accessibility feature, not a full rollout
Riot was deliberate but measured about the inclusion of controller support in the game. The WASD team developers clearly labelled it as an accessibility feature, largely built to allow players with mobility limitations to enjoy the game through widely-used hardware such as the Xbox Adaptive Controller.
While we don’t have plans to officially support controllers or joysticks broadly right now, we did want to enable play on joysticks through remapping of WASD for accessibility reasons.
The feature is part of a wider input system overhaul that also introduced custom cursor movement inputs and expanded keybinding options. Full controller support remains officially unplanned, though Riot noted they continue to monitor player requests.
