Valve says Steam Controller sold out 'faster than we anticipated' but has a plan to make more

The Steam Controller sold out after barely a day on sale. Valve didn't see it coming—the pad mostly sold out in minutes, not hours.

Valve posted on Bluesky promising more stock and a timeline soon.

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.

— @valvesoftware.com (@valvesoftware.com.bsky.social) 2026-05-05T16:51:33.866Z

"We have built up a good supply of this," Cardinali said. He noted this was based on anticipated demand, which today's admission proves was lower than reality.

"But it's based on what we anticipate supply to be. And supply could be much larger than we anticipate. In which case our production has a finite limit on how much we can make. And we'll do our best to keep up with demand if it greatly exceeds our expectations."

Yang told us Valve has knobs it can turn—presumably additional orders with manufacturers and assembly capacity to meet demand.

"We have knobs we can turn to try to get things to people faster," says Cardinali. "It's complicated and you know the mass production machine is a big machine with a lot of momentum. So, depending on how it goes for the first chunk of time, if we have high demand and it stays high demand, there are things we can do to help alleviate that down the road."

The question for Valve is how far to push. Risk making too many and deal with surplus inventory, or eke out supply over time like it did with the Steam Deck? Valve got stuck with excess inventory for the original Steam Controller. That won't be a problem here—the new controller is off to a much stronger start.

"If we're like, 'oh, we actually probably need to make more' then we can turn that knob up and have them producing more," Yang says.

Higher than anticipated demand brought scalpers. Some have been selling the controller on eBay for $300, a 200% markup. These listings appear to be drying up—potentially reported or hit with fake purchases and cancellations to make them untenable, a strategy used during graphics card shortages.

Long-term supply should be fine. From my dive inside the controller, there's little to cause supply issues. No RAM, no storage, just sensors, PCBs and SoCs. Global shipping takes time, but resupply shouldn't be a problem.

"We try to build enough wiggle room so that we can try not to be out of stock for a really long time," Yang says.