Less than half an hour after releasing on the US Steam storefront, the Steam Controller sold out – while also entirely destroying Steam’s servers. Right after 3pm, the website DownDetector shows the immense spike of shoppers crushing Valve’s servers in a mad rush to get their hands on what every Steam Deck owner dreams of: the inputs of a Steam Deck on their PC.
Of course, this was only the US-based sales; the United Kingdom saw a little more success with a three-hour sale window before the SOLD OUT notice arrived.
For us Aussies, the Steam Controller is still available to purchase via the Australian storefront – so if you couldn’t be arsed getting up at 3am to try and score one, you might have missed the fireworks, but you haven’t missed the show. [UPDATE] Annnnnnd it’s gone. Australian units have now sold out.
For the fence sitters, it’s definitely worth sparing a concerted thought on whether you’d like one or not, given that the scalping situation has already started heating up in the US, with eBay listings already showing units up for sale for a gross $80USD mark up.
So the question remains, is this indicative of what we can expect when the Steam Machine finally comes to market? Will us Aussies be swimming in units while the rest of the world sells out? (No, they sold out for us a few short hours ago) Will the scalpers be out in force? Will the Steam machine even make it to market?!
What a time.
Did you grab an early Steam Controller? Did you wrestle with a dying Steam marketplace? Let us know in the comments or on social media.
