Getting PES 2017 Running on PC With a Keyboard
PES 2017 on PC is one of those titles that works fine out of the box, but the default keyboard mapping is absolute garbage. Konami never bothered to redesign the keybinds for the PC version, so you're stuck with QWERTY mappings that fight you every match. I've spent more time than I'd like to admit tweaking these settings across multiple installs. The process itself isn't complicated. You download the game, install it, run it once to generate the config files, then go into the settings menu and rebind everything to something usable. But if you skip the part where you actually edit the setting.ini file directly, you'll waste hours struggling with default keys like F5 for sprint and R2-equivalent buttons that map to the wrong side of your hand. Here's how it actually works in practice. After installation, head to C:\Program Files (x86)\KONAMI\Pro Evolution Soccer 2017\Setting. Open setting.ini in Notepad. That's where all your keyboard mappings live. The default file looks like this:
[KeySet]
KeyShooting = 49
KeyPassing = 50
KeySprint = 70
KeyChangePlayer = 83 Those numbers are virtual key codes. 49 is "1", 50 is "2", 70 is "F", and 83 is "S". So your shoot key is bound to 1, pass is 2, sprint is F, and change player is S. It's not terrible for pass and shoot, but sprint on F means your right pinky is doing all the work while your left hand hovers over useless keys. The fix is straightforward. Change those values to something ergonomic. Most people I know settle on this layout:
Shoot = 74 (J)
Pass = 75 (K)
Sprint = 68 (D)
Change Player = 65 (A)
Through Ball = 72 (H)
Slide Tackle = 76 (L)
Switch Player Auto = 87 (W)
Crouch = 88 (X) That gives you a clean block on the keyboard. Your left hand handles movement with WASD, your right hand handles all actions with JKHL. It takes about one match to adapt, then it becomes automatic. I switched to this layout back in 2017 and haven't gone back since. If you're downloading the game, the legitimate route is through Steam. It's around fifteen dollars and includes all the patches and online functionality. There are pirated copies floating around on torrent sites, but those often come with broken offline modes, missing online features, or cracked executables that trigger antivirus warnings. The Steam version runs stable on modern Windows without any extra configuration.
Get the Full Details
One thing nobody mentions about the keyboard setup: the detail settings inside the game matter just as much as the keybinds. Go into Detail Settings and set Pass Mode to Short Pass by default. The default is Through Ball, which means every time you press pass you're sending a lofted ball into traffic. Change it to Short Pass and hold the pass button for a through ball when you actually want one. This single change cuts down on pointless turnovers by probably forty percent. Another detail that trips people up is the camera angle. The default camera is too wide for keyboard play. Go into field settings and switch to TV Wide or TV Normal. The wider cameras make you rely on sight rather than muscle memory for positioning, which hurts keyboard players more than mouse or controller users since you're already managing two separate input zones. I ran into a weird issue on one machine where the game wouldn't save any custom keybinds. Turns out the Setting folder had read-only permissions set somehow. Right-click the folder, go to Properties, uncheck Read-only, apply to all subfolders, and restart the game. Saved me from having to rebind everything after each session.
Performance-wise, PES 2017 is light enough to run on almost anything. Integrated graphics can handle it at low settings. The bottleneck is usually your CPU single-core performance since the game engine doesn't scale well across multiple cores. If you're getting stutters during matches, close everything else first. Chrome tabs alone can eat enough RAM to cause frame drops. The game also has a known issue with windowed mode on Windows 10 and 11 where alt-tabbing causes the audio to desync. It's harmless but distracting. Running fullscreen or borderless windowed fixes it. To toggle between modes, press Alt+Enter while in the game. Controller support works if you have an Xbox controller plugged in, but the analog stick sensitivity is miscalibrated out of the box. Left stick deadzone sits at roughly twenty percent instead of the usual ten, making fine dribbling feel mushy. You can adjust this in the same setting.ini file under the JoyStick sections, but most people just leave it and get used to pushing the stick further than they'd normally need to.
If you want to play online, you need a Konami ID linked to the game. The servers still run, though matchmaking times vary depending on what time of day you play. Peak hours are evening in Europe and Americas. Off-peak can mean waiting several minutes for a match to start. For the best experience overall, I'd recommend the keyboard layout I mentioned, the camera change to TV Normal, short pass as default, and running the game in fullscreen. That's it. No mods needed, no third-party tools, just a few minutes of setup that makes the difference between frustrating and actually enjoyable.
