PC Gamer Hardware Team Splits Over the Simplest Question in PC Gaming: What Are Your Mouse’s Side Buttons For?

A heated internal debate has erupted at PC Gamer’s hardware team over one of the most fundamental questions in PC gaming: what should the two side buttons on a gaming mouse actually do? The disagreement, which began last week during an office discussion about Razer’s new 12-button MMO gaming mouse, quickly spilled into a wider poll of the publication’s readership and revealed a surprising schism between the editorial team and its audience. While the writers argue that the side buttons should be repurposed for copy and paste on desktop, the majority of readers—and the default configuration on most gaming mice—still insist they belong to web browsing.

The conversation started innocently enough. The team was mulling over Razer’s latest MMO peripheral, a mouse packed with an impressive 12 programmable buttons, and found themselves at a loss for what to do with the two side buttons that nearly every gaming mouse ships with. That practical puzzle opened the door to a much larger philosophical argument about desktop productivity versus raw gaming input. The author, Jacob, who has spent years working alongside the hardware team, took the disagreement to heart—literally. He described the fallout as a personal betrayal, noting that the colleagues he trusted and shared laughs with apparently held a fundamentally different view from his own.

The Forward/Back vs. Copy/Paste Divide

At the heart of the argument is a question of ingenuity versus convention. The editorial team’s preferred use for the side buttons is forward and back navigation, which conveniently remains the default assignment on virtually every gaming mouse out of the box. Jacob, however, sees the default as a glaring failure of imagination. In his view, the side buttons are far better spent on copy and paste, allowing users to shuttle text between applications without ever reaching for the keyboard. He argues the arrangement is not only more ergonomic but more moral, suggesting that readers who rely on forward and back are simply in too much of a hurry between webpages.

Hear me out: it makes it easy to copy from one place to another without ever reaching for your keyboard. I’d actually argue that’s more ergonomic. Not in a medical or legal sense, but a moral one. Whereas you can already go forward and back on a browser with just your mouse. Why are you in such a rush between webpages anyways?

Jacob, PC Gamer hardware team

To settle the matter, the team put the question to its readers in a poll framed as a friendly test of solidarity. The prompt asked: “Jacob wants to know if there are people like him, so do you have your mouse side button set to forward/back or copy/paste?” The results, however, came back with a resounding verdict against Jacob’s theory. A commanding 67% of respondents—1,343 votes—confirmed they use the buttons for forward and back, while only about 10%, roughly 200 readers, aligned themselves with the copy and paste camp. The remaining 23% cited “something else entirely,” which Jacob attributed to genre-specific macros, particularly in first-person shooters where he maps the buttons to the C and V keys.

The community reaction, as reflected in the poll, was emphatic. The near two hundred readers who sided with Jacob described themselves as “kindred spirits” and “fellow travellers,” a self-aware minority acknowledging they are, in the author’s words, simply wrong. The overwhelming preference for forward and back underscores a broader truth about gaming peripherals: manufacturers and consumers alike have settled on a configuration that prioritizes browser navigation and in-game movement over desktop text manipulation.

Looking Ahead

Despite the spirited disagreement, the debate remains confined to the realm of personal preference rather than any pressing technical development. Jacob conceded that his own habits run even further afield, joking that he rests his middle finger on the scroll wheel at all times and uses his ring finger for right-clicking—admissions he suspects most readers would find hard to replicate. The poll, which has been running for a week, will now shift its focus to a considerably less contentious topic: how much RGB lighting festoons the average gaming PC. Until then, the hardware team will continue to wonder whether their readers are simply in too much of a hurry to browse the web, or whether they have simply never discovered the true potential of the side buttons.