Before the Xbox 360 arrived in 2006, using a gamepad on PC was a pretty annoying experience. You'd have to manually configure buttons, games wouldn't detect the controller or show the correct icons, ...

If you have a controller from GameSir, PowerA, Turtle Beach, Victrix (PDP), Razer, or 8BitDo, you won't need to dabble in software to set up back buttons, but each brand will have its own variation on ...