The Steam Controller is now available – or, at least, it was as of earlier today. Valve's servers instantly broke when the controller went up for sale, and by the time the dust had settled, it had sold out entirely. Unless, of course, you're willing to pay the scalper prices that are already trending above $200 a pop.
Orders for the Steam Controller were set to go live at 1pm ET today, though judging by the comments I've seen on the fairly annoyed Steam subreddit, they actually went up a couple of minutes early. Either way, there was such a rush on those orders that Valve's servers immediately buckled, leaving eager buyers stuck with endless error messages as they tried to secure their prize.
It only took about 35 minutes for the official order page for the controller to start showing "out of stock," at least in North America. Some fans who kept pinging the order button despite all the errors managed to secure their controllers, but the sad reality is setting in for everybody else. The device has sporadically come back in stock here and there, presumably as small numbers of orders get cancelled, but the first wave of availability is very much over.
You can, of course, still get a Steam Controller with little hassle, except for the fact that you'll be paying double MSRP for the privilege. Scalper listings are already all over eBay, and buyers are biting. Numerous listings for $200 or more have already been sold, despite warnings from the community that nobody should be supporting scalpers.
Hopefully Valve will be able to spin up more stock sooner rather than later, but manufacturing hardware is tough business right now. This whole thing certainly doesn't bode well for upcoming hardware like the Steam Machine, which faces a whole 'nother range of issues thanks to the AI RAM crisis. For those of you hunting for Valve devices in the foreseeable future, all I can say is good luck.
