Valve has pledged to provide more stock for the Steam Controller, after many would-be buyers missed out and were left disappointed.
Earlier this week, Valve’s new controller was made available for purchase on Steam and began to sell out in some regions within less than an hour. As is the way with high-demand items, it wasn’t long before the Steam Controller was listed on resale sites such as eBay, where some sellers had it listed for more than double the retail price.
Now, in a post on X, Valve has said that it is working to make more stock available as soon as possible.
“Steam Controller ran out faster than we anticipated, and we hate that not everyone who wanted one was able to get it,” the post read.
“We’re working on getting more in stock and will have an update on expected timeline soon.”
The whole process has left many people frustrated, with some asking why Valve didn’t adopt a similar approach to how it handled Steam Deck preorders. “With the Steam Deck, you pre-ordered months in advance,” one Reddit user wrote (credit to VGC for spotting this). “There were a few waves, but eventually it got to you.”
“Scalpers were still there, but as long as you were able to wait out the list, it was fine. You were on a list.”
“This was first come first serve, and now so many listings on eBay for 3x the price. Please let me pre-order the next batch. I work and don’t have time to click in a 30 min window to fight scalper bots.”
Valve announced the Steam Controller last year, alongside the Steam Machine mini PC and Steam Frame VR headset. In February, Valve announced that all three products had been delayed from Q1 2026 to the first half of the year due to the rising price of components such as RAM.
With the Steam Controller being the least affected, Valve decided to release the device while it waits for component costs to come down.
Speaking with Polygon, Valve hardware engineer Steve Cardinali said, “This doesn’t have RAM in it, and it’s not as complicated to start getting out the door for us.”
“We’re ready for it. We wanted to build up quantity so that we could try to address everybody who wants one at launch, but it’s possible that the demand for it far exceeds our expectations.”