Steam Controller more popular than Valve expected - they're working on stock issues

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThere is a cynical side of me that says the buzz surrounding "Gizmo sales crash site, gizmo sells out in hours" is bigger than the buzz surrounding "gizmo sells this many units out of a large stockpile" even if the second number is bigger. So, what's the motivation to fix it?

It's definitely a better headline than "$vendor gets rid of unwanted inventory in a massive firesale," that's for sure.

I dont get why the scalpers are such a big factor at all. No one has gotten just one controller yet, and still their scheme seems to find customers. We know that there will be enough controllers for everyone, so in my book, anyone who pays the scalp-extra can´t be helped. I want so many things very bad, but the anticipation for things is a nice thing, right? It just sucks if you don´t know if you get a chance to get a toy.

Last edited by Chrisznix on 6 May 2026 at 12:21 pm UTC

Quoting: JohnologueI'm sure with this first run, people were ready to just keep buying until it sold out.
I assume the next batch will be more normal.

Maybe they should just charge extra for the first run with full transparency that the price goes down after. People who want it NOW can pay, and scalpers are told upfront "you are going to lose a lot of money".

Probably still a bad idea for a lot of reasons. If it was an easy problem, I'm sure people would've had a fix for it by now.

I'm not so sure the next batch will be much more normal. A DigitalFoundry YouTube poll with 20K responses had the following results: 8% got one, 9% didn't get one, 33% would get one later and 50% didn't want one.

The amount of people who didn't get one is just as large as the group that did. So Valve can sell that amount again. And possibly more, as there's even more people who might try to get it next batch as well.

Why didn't they name it differently, like, let me be creative, "Steam Controller 2"?!?

The cynic in me still thinks it was a small release on purpose, despite all the polite speak about underestimating demand.

Would be happy to be proved wrong.

But now resigned to hopefully pick one up on a later release.

Quoting: Mountain ManPeople on Reddit lamenting that there's not even the option to give Valve your money upfront, and then they ship as units become available, which would be the sensible way to do it. Instead, it looks like Valve is going to put batches up for sale, and then it's going to be another mad scramble between customers and scalpers until they sell out again.

Valve could literally have let everyone sign up to get them a week early, and then sent out invites to buy randomly to the pool of applicants with a time limit of a day or something.

They could have also tied serials of these controllers to steam families for the first year too, so that scalping resulted in a brick if sold.

There's loads of options to stamp out the rampant scalping, but I think companies know it's in their best interest to have their stuff be scarce for the first year if they want to make money, and this controller is priced to make money unlike some past hardware releases.

Quoting: JesTechThey could have also tied serials of these controllers to steam families for the first year too, so that scalping resulted in a brick if sold.

There's loads of options to stamp out the rampant scalping, but I think companies know it's in their best interest to have their stuff be scarce for the first year if they want to make money, and this controller is priced to make money unlike some past hardware releases.

Serial number DRM and remote bricking?
HELL no. Can't imagine you were hoping for anything but outrage posting that on a Linux site, but it's certainly outrageous and needs to be condemned outright, it should be as socially unacceptable as age verification, etc.

Also, scalping doesn't make manufacturers money, unless the company is doing something VERY illegal that would be discovered very quickly.

Quoting: JesTech

Quoting: Mountain ManPeople on Reddit lamenting that there's not even the option to give Valve your money upfront, and then they ship as units become available, which would be the sensible way to do it. Instead, it looks like Valve is going to put batches up for sale, and then it's going to be another mad scramble between customers and scalpers until they sell out again.

Valve could literally have let everyone sign up to get them a week early, and then sent out invites to buy randomly to the pool of applicants with a time limit of a day or something.

They could have also tied serials of these controllers to steam families for the first year too, so that scalping resulted in a brick if sold.

There's loads of options to stamp out the rampant scalping, but I think companies know it's in their best interest to have their stuff be scarce for the first year if they want to make money, and this controller is priced to make money unlike some past hardware releases.

Just a simple preorder system with a limit of two per account and units shipped in the order purchases were made is all they would have needed to do. Valve could defeat scalpers the same way they defeated piracy, by making it easy for legitimate customers to buy products.

As for tracked serial numbers and remote bricking of hardware, not just no, but hell no! That is an unacceptable solution.