Couldn’t get hold of one of Valve’s pricey (£85) but fancy new Steam Controllers before they sold out? There’s possibly a solution for you.
Overnight, Valve announced a reservation programme for the Steam Controller, which will begin today, 8th May, at 10am Pacific Time (6pm UK time). This entitles you to essentially reserve your place in line to order a new Steam Controller when it comes back in stock. Note, there’s no word on when the Steam Controller will be back in stock, and “replenishment of inventory will vary from region to region”, Valve noted in a Steam update post.
To stop scalpers reserving all of the Steam Controller stock and selling on eBay at higher prices again, there are some fairly strict limitations associated with the reservation programme. (Limitations it would have been nice to have in the first place.) These are:
- One Steam Controller per user
- No eligibility for people who already bought a Steam Controller (through Steam, presumably)
- Three days or 72 hours to make your purchase on Steam once you receive the order email
- Having a Steam account in “good standing”
- Having an account that bought something on Steam before 27th April 2026
“Steam Controller launched on May 4th, and while we were happy to see such a high level of interest, the experience for a lot of you trying to buy it was incredibly frustrating,” Valve noted in its post. “We plan to continue replenishing stock as we get more in, but in the meantime wanted to share changes we’re making to improve the purchase experience and to limit reseller activity.
“Beginning May 8th at 10am Pacific, we’re opening a reservation queue for Steam Controller. Once you reserve, your place in line will be saved. When we go back in stock, order emails will be sent in the same order that reservations were made.”
Reservations will start being fulfilled next week in the US and Canada, and in “the following weeks” in the UK, Europe and Australia.
We spent a week testing Valve’s new Steam Controller and declared it “better in almost every way” compared to the 2015 original Steam Controller. It’s now rechargeable, has more input options, has better sticks and buttons and generally a more sturdy design, and of course the iconic mouse-control-enabling touchpad controls return, though we weren’t entirely convinced by the new placement of these. “It’s a rock-solid upgrade,” Matt wrote. “But for everyone else, at £85, it’s unlikely to be the best choice compared to traditional controllers.”
