https://x.com/valvesoftware/status/2051695149026353424
“Steam Controller ran out faster than we anticipated, and we hate that not everyone who wanted one was able to get it. We’re working on getting more in stock and will have an update on expected timeline soon.”
I want one, but I’m not sure I $100 want one.
Nobody cares
True lol
Really should have just let people preorder to get ideas for day one demand. I expect after one major restock, the resale value tanks and things are normal in gamepad land again. I’m always annoyed with these companies not taking backorders. They did that with the Deck. It’s a controller sold by the company it’s from sold in its store that has already had backorders done for the Deck launch. This isn’t Nvidia and AIB partners. This is fully Valve controlled in a proven storefront. They could have handled this way better
To everyone complaining about scalpers: if you report them on ebay, they will get taken down. Go make their lives harder!
Any listing that went up before the official release date should automatically be flagged and removed
Yeah, agreed. eBay is notorious for being brutal on sellers, taking them down rather easily.
Scam listings are still everywhere though.
Steam hardware selling faster than Nintendo hardware.
Did they not limit pre-orders to people with existing steam accounts and one controller per account because that would have been an excellent idea and I assumed that they would have thought of that.
Anyway I have zero interest in the controller until the VR headset comes out.
They did it with the Deck, but apparently didn’t think the controller would garner the same reaction, somehow.
They did do it with the controller though
Yeah I think the limit was two per account. I don’t think scalpers are really to blame here they just really didn’t account for how much people wanted this thing.
Why not just take all the orders now and increase the estimated shipping date? Cut scalpers off at the knees by eliminating FOMO.
I love my original steam controller. I want one of the new ones for when my original eventually breaks. I don’t need it now though. So I would be happy to wait, if I knew they weren’t going to abandon it like the old controller.
I hope this wasn’t deliberate, but if it was Valve is going down the dark Nintendo path.
They do not want to over produce. Its very likely they just under estimated how many people would want it at this price point.
They’ve been burned sitting on stock that they have to fire sale to get rid of.
I got two Steam Links for $10 back in the day
I was so confused back then 😅. Still rocking that practically free Steam Link. I like it.
And they had an excellent system with the Deck that for some damn reason they opted not to emulate. Fucking stupid.
I’m of the assumption that of their production runs they have a majority of controllers currently allocated to the console shipments that we’ve been hearing about the last few days. I assume this will even out with time and wasn’t super intentional
I’m not following, why would they want to make less money?
It’s marketing. Nintendo deliberately under stocks new hardware to make the value of the device explode on the secondary market. Scalpers know this and usually buy out most of the first run. When you can’t get the new Nintendo device because it’s unavailable and scalpers are selling it for 2-3x retail price, you are far more likely to buy is asap when it comes back in stock. They make less money initially but in a way that makes the value of the product extremely high, giving people extremely high motivation to buy while they can. Also, a sale to a scalper is worth as much to Nintendo as sale to a consumer. Nintendo is notorious for doing this every time.
Pretty sure that everyone who wanted a switch 2 on launch got one, and I didn’t hear about any huge scalper problems or shortages. It set records for a launch, 3.4m in the first 4 days; 5.82m in the first month. 1.1m in the US week 1, beating PS4.
Now stop making me defend Nintendo of all things
Nintendo consoles are usually there to play exclusive games on it. The Steam Controller on the other hand is not a neccessary device. I don’t know if Nintendo does scarcity intentionally (I doubt that, but that is not the point here), but for Valve there is absolutely no reason to.
Valve has no reason to do this with intention. I just think they didn’t a good job preventing or slowing down scalpers. I think they didn’t think it would sell out like this, because they know the price is a bit on higher side. And compared to the Steam Deck, they don’t “need” to sell those controllers immediately.
At the end I believe it was just miscalculation. That’s all to it.
They could just open up a permenant preorder system for all of their hardware and avoid the bullshit to begin with.
Yeah, I mean, at this point valve has proved to be trustworthy. I wouldn’t mind placing a pre-order or backorder with them.
How the did it with the steam deck was nice. It wasn’t a pre-order in the usual sense, since you didn’t pay anywhere close to full price. Just a refundable $5 that would go towards the cost of purchase when you bought it.
I don’t mind that for hardware, since it cuts out scalpers and doesn’t obligate you to purchase something before you know the quality.
That’s 100% the way to do it. Wonder why they aren’t doing that again. Maybe they’ll open it up.
Plus hardware preorders actually still make sense because it can’t just be digitally copied and a key generated without anyone even needing to press a button. Which was also the case for games at one point.
As someone who waited 6 months for their Framework 13 pre-order batch to ship, let me tell you, there are drawbacks to that system as well!
Looks to me more an endorsement of preordering when stock is limited. If delivering laptops in the order it received took 6 months then a first come first serve would have meant no laptop at all within 6 months for many people who wanted one.
It’d come down more to who is the luckiest and has the best bots.
I already waited a few years for a new Steam Controller, so what’s another half a year?
Man, if anyone reeaaallly wanted one and didn’t get it hmu and maybe I could ship you my v1
But this reeks of scalpers to me, if you really need a controller save some dosh and pick up a Vader Pro
My eyes lit cup when you mentioned the Vader Pro, but I was left with disappointment due to the lack of dual trackpads.
Yep. The trackpads are 90% of why I want this controller. It’s such a killer feature.
As an owner of the original I find the track pads to be pretty meh. Theyre equally as good as any track pad, so not great. What I like and cant understand why isn’t universal are the paddleflaps/buttons on the back. The closest anything has ever gotten is the Z button on the n64 controller.
For me, the trackpads are specifically useful for mouse controls, not for precision. I’m a couch gamer and tired of having to reach for my mouse or keyboard just to do one thing and then grab my controller again.
With the trackpads, I also get the virtual keyboard. Another killer feature.
Yeah they have their uses. I’m glad they relocated them to the bottom of the controller though, as they aren’t quite useful enough to be at the center. I’m curious if the new one will have the same comfort level as the old one.
It took me a while to get used to them but using dual track pads for all games made everything feel so much better, I’m getting the new controller but I think there’s a good chance I’ll stick to the original Steam Controller.
If yoi take some time to tweak the settings the track pads can do anything.
I use mine for radial menu input without the need for a modifier button. Many of the best mods I use for skyrim/fallout use keybinds for all sorts of actions. Games that work best with mouse/keyboard that have way too many keybinds for a normal controller worked awesome on my OG steamcontroller and great on the deck with a little configuration.
The trackpads on the Steamdeck/SC2 are much better than the SC1.
Valve was forced to stop manufacturing the SC1 due to patent trolling related to the paddles.
Honestly I don’t even blame them for underestimating demand. Based on comments here and my own personal intuition, I would’ve guessed that it would’ve sold great, to a very niche audience.
Maybe it has more widespread demand than expected, those track pads make it amazing for any couch PC usage, gaming or not, and many existing SteamDeck owners like myself are already aware of this.
Please Valve, get the fuck off X.
They should diversify where they post and help guide people to those other platforms, but just leaving X altogether wouldn’t accomplish anything. They need to talk to the people where they are
That’s nonsense, if they post on their own website a thousand twitter accounts would screenshot and reshare.
they are on bluesky fwiw
They need to be on Mastodon specifically.
It’s unfortunate BlueSky is going the way it is the atproto seems pretty cool, and tangled appeals to me for the social appeal of code.
Really any activitypub compatible service. Honestly for a big company like that I dislike mastodon, bluesky, anything twitter adjacent, because then responses become a linear “stream of consciousness”of people responding and it’s hard to filter the signal from the noise. Honestly I’d prefer a value community on lemmy somewhere that they run
Valve dont need to be on X lol, anything they post in an official manner on any site, will be immediately shared by news outlets anyway.
Same goes for any large company.
Well said. Valve is a business, and X is where you post if you actually want a massive number of eyes on your content. The only real alternative is facebook and maybe tictok.
Kinda reminds me of a poster I saw today advertising a communist group and an anti-billionaire rally. Had a QR code to follow them on Instagram and X. 🙄
They’re a big enough name to make it work too.
Hell, Skip the baby step of Bluesky and get em a Mastodon account.
Reminds me of a local pro-privacy group I came across a while back, whose only public online presence was a Facebook group.
Like I get it from a “reach” standpoint, and I think it’s fine if you’re following a POSSE system, but I feel a lot of people don’t do that.
Extinction Rebellion primarily used WhatsApp as their communication method. I always knew those guys were a bit of a joke but their opsec is utterly useless.
Convince the user base to switch platforms first, and the companies will follow.
Every time they make a news announcement on a different platform, just make a tweet that says “Hey, Valve news update here: <link>. BTW, fuck Elon”
Easier said than done but they’d hardly be the first.
And at the very least, they shouldn’t be paying the fascists running it $2,000 a year to be there.
There’s a decent chance an account as big as Valve gets the “premium business” bullshit for free. Not sure if there’s a way to tell but it’s definitely possible.
Only a rumor, but I’ve heard Gabe Newell is friendly and social with Elon Musk, as a fellow billionaire.
I think it was confirmed that they’re friends or at least used to be in like 2019. Not sure how it is now with how far off the deep end musk went.
I’m a bit miffed they didn’t handle the release better. Not sure what restrictions were in place but judging from eBay scalper screenshots it wasn’t much.
If only there were two other console SKUs they sold in the past that would’ve better prepared them for this.
It was limited to two per purchase, but I could still add (and maybe buy) more after I bought my 2
Scalpers are already selling it like double the MSRP.
Are they offering or selling at that price? I mean sure, I really want to play with that controller, that’s why I ordered it. But I also kinda offer it here, in this community exclusively, for like, idk, a million dollars? Offer negotionable 😅
Fucking consumerism. Everyone really NEEDS brand new controller now. Because valve…
It is a quite unique controller for PC with those trackpads and highly customizable functions, and most people with similar first gen Steam Controller are on the point of breaking or wanting a little bit extra of those same functions they’re used to. It’s normal to have high demand, and if many of those are scalpers they’ll get fucked by that problem.
You are 100% right despite the downvotes.
Consumerism will be the end of humanity.
That or communism
Nobody needs it, but people want it because it’s an interesting product by a renowned company
Don’t feed the scalpers people
It wouldn’t have cost them anything to say “we’re opening up orders to users who have had a Steam account for at least 2 years, limit 2 per account. After 30 days we’ll open it up to everyone. “
That alone would have stopped so much scalping, and garnered goodwill with the players.
But do offer them a carrot they can never quite reach but seems worth going out of their way for.
You can report scalpers and get their listings taken down on ebay.
