The most famous sound effect in movie history is now part of Valve’s new Steam Controller, as it literally screams in terror if you drop it.
If you don’t know what the Wilhelm scream is by name, you’ll almost certainly recognise it the second you hear it. Although first recorded in 1951, to be used as a stock sound effect, it rose to prominence when legendary sound designer Ben Burtt featured it in the original Star Wars and subsequently most other Lucasfilm productions.
The sound effect became increasingly popular during the 80s and as time went on many films began to use it as a homage to Lucasfilm and a sort of audio Easter egg. Although it’s so well known now that it’s become a cliché and its use has dwindled in recent years.
So what has that got to do with video games? Well, if you drop or throw the new Steam Controller then it will randomly emit the Wilhelm scream in terror.
The controller doesn’t do it every time you drop it, but enough people have them in the wild now that they’ve begun to notice the unexpected feature.
If you watch the video below, you’ll see the that the sound quality is quite poor and it’s not very loud, but then, unlike some console controllers, such as the PlayStation 5 DualSense, the Steam Controller doesn’t have a speaker built into it.
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Rather than witchcraft, the theory is that the sound is being made using the haptic motors of the device, which can be ground together in such a way to make fairly specific sounds. Which in turn implies it was actually quite a bit of effort to have the controller sound like it was screaming.
In terms of video games that use the Willhelm scream, we couldn’t find a recent compilation, but the list includes multiple entries in the God Of War and Metal Gear Solid franchises, as well as Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, early Call of Duty titles, Ori And The Blind Forest, Mass Effect 2, and, of course, lots of Star Wars games.
Since it is just a random stock effect, that was never intended to be of any special significance, it’s cheap to licence and available to almost anyone that wants it.
Its original use, if you’re wondering, was to illustrate a man being dragged underwater and eaten by an alligator. Its most common use nowadays is when someone is falling a large distance, hence the Steam Controller Easter egg.
The new Steam controller was originally announced alongside the new Steam Machine and a new VR headset from Valve. The latter two devices were expected to get a full reveal early this year, if not an actual release, but they’ve been delayed by the ongoing memory crisis.
Although Valve has claimed the Steam Machine will still be out before June this year they’re leaving things awful late to confirm that. Indeed, the fact that they released the Steam Controller now suggests they didn’t think it was sensible to wait.
Maybe they should have though, as they didn’t bother to do a pre-order scheme for the controller and when they quickly ran out of stock it ended up going for over £700 on eBay, whereas it should have cost £85.
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