Steam Controller sells out within 30 minutes in some regions as scalpers start listing them for up to three times the price

Players have been expressing their frustration after the newly released Steam Controller sold out within around half an hour.

The controller went on sale on Valve‘s storefront on Monday at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST, but demand caused site issues with numerous players reporting error messages.

Within around 30 minutes the controller started selling out in some regions, and it’s currently sold out in every major market, with players reporting Out of Stock messages across the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Japan and Europe.

As often happens with popular items, scalpers have now started listing Steam Controllers on sites like eBay, for higher than the original £85 / $99 price point.

At the time of writing there are numerous Steam Controllers on the UK, US and Australian eBay sites, selling for prices as high as $349.99.

While some scalpers drastically overprice things initially then drop the price until they find a seller, at least some are finding bids at slightly lower prices, suggesting demand is there.

One listing on the US eBay site currently has seven bids and sits at $230.50, more than twice the retail price of the controller.

Players have been taking to social media and the Steam Reddit page to vent their frustration at the way the situation was handled.

Some have compared the situation to the Steam Deck pre-order process, where – although site issues occurred there too – players were at least able to pay a $5 deposit to secure a place on a pre-order queue, and Steam Decks were then sent out in queue order as new waves of stock arrived.

As it now stands, some are worried that when the next batch of Steam Controllers arrive it’s going to be another first-come, first-served situation and it may quickly sell out again.

“With the Steam Deck, you pre-ordered months in advance,” Reddit user Competitive-Elk said on the Steam Reddit page. “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.”

The Steam Controller was announced alongside the Steam Machine mini PC and Steam Frame VR headset, but Valve decided to release the controller first as components shortages continue to affect the other items.

“This doesn’t have RAM in it, and it’s not as complicated to start getting out the door for us,” Valve hardware engineer Steve Cardinali told Polygon. “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.”