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.

Quoting: Craggles086The 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.

Given its price and, ...um..., unusual aesthetic I don't blame them for being overly cautious.

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

it might not do then extra money, but unless they are losing money to get marketshare on each unity sold (as consoles usually do) it will make then money, just not at scalped prices.

Quoting: ElectricPrismI saw someone claim on X that Valve has 20,000 Steam Machines, considering they sold Millions of Steam Decks, that's going to sell out so fast, it'll be the Steam Controller all over again.

Valve also pays modern RAM prices.
I don't think they can sell equivalent numbers to the Steam Deck.

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?

Larger Gizmo sales numbers mean larger income and thus happy investors.
Costs pr value, gains hard cash value.

Quoting: elmapul

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

it might not do then extra money, but unless they are losing money to get marketshare on each unity sold (as consoles usually do) it will make then money, just not at scalped prices.

Ooh, this makes me think of a scalper scamming business model.
Overproduce your product in the premiere, don't publish stock numbers and enable scalping.
Maybe also add an every x items sold temporary "out of stock warning".
The scalpers will buy up unreasonably large shares of your stock and after that you will still either be competing with said scalpers or have sold more items than you could to your customers and the scalpers will have surplus stock.

Quoting: LoudTechie

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?

Larger Gizmo sales numbers mean larger income and thus happy investors.
Costs pr value, gains hard cash value.

Yeah, but the point is, the initial sales are not all the sales. If you can get big buzz at the beginning, get more notice, that's a ton of free publicity which will help maximize sales in the only slightly longer term. Sorry, I thought that was implied by my commment.

Quoting: Johnologue

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.

Scalping should make manufacturers money. The shortage creates news (like this) which is a free advertisement, which plays on people's psychology... and scarcity also is a play on psychology. If you think something is rare and hard to get, you might pick it up just because you might not have a chance to later.

You did kind of miss the point of locking down the devices for a period though. I wasn't trying to say they would remotely brick the devices at all, only that unless activated on the proper steam account on a device by a user it wouldn't work, and they could remove the restriction after some amount of time, maybe 6 months to a year or something. Really not that hard to consider feasible technical options to restrict the transferability of a device like this for a short period of time until stocks are at a level where anyone can freely pick one up without scalpers ruining it like they always do with electronics releases. Instead you just don't get one for now, enjoy I guess? Can't worry about DRM if you can't even get your hands on one lol.

My hate for scalpers outweighs my desire for absolute freedom. Like most things, i'm just looking for a middleground and I can think of many technical options to do that. Scalping should be illegal imo.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: LoudTechie

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?

Larger Gizmo sales numbers mean larger income and thus happy investors.
Costs pr value, gains hard cash value.

Yeah, but the point is, the initial sales are not all the sales. If you can get big buzz at the beginning, get more notice, that's a ton of free publicity which will help maximize sales in the only slightly longer term. Sorry, I thought that was implied by my commment.

True, but that makes it a balancing act depending on the total percentage you expect initial sales to be of your year 1 sales.
In this case the truth of your hypothesis should become pretty apparent in a short while.
If Valve catches up with demand fast(~<6months) it was calculated in otherwise it wasn't, because scaling up hardware production requires time.