Valve is opening a reservation queue for the Steam Controller following overwhelming initial demand. The Steam Controller (which is excellent) went on sale earlier this week, but sold out nearly instantly and many users reported a frustrating experience trying to secure a unit of their own.
To alleviate future problems, Valve is opening a reservation queue tomorrow, May 8, at 10am PT. This queue will function similar to the queue system used for the Steam Deck launch, where Valve will send out order emails to reservation holders as stock becomes available.
Here’s the full details from Valve:
- Reservations will be limited to one Steam Controller per user.
- Once you receive an order email, you have three days (72 hours) to make your purchase on Steam.
- For now, customers who have already purchased a Steam Controller are not yet eligible to reserve another Steam Controller.
- Your account must be in good standing on Steam
- You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27, 2026
Valve says it will begin fulfilling reservations next week in the US and Canada and the following weeks for the UK, EU, and Australia. That said, there’s no mention of how long it will take to work through the queue, or how long it’ll be until the Steam Controller is simply in stock and available for purchase without a reservation.
For context, Steam Deck reservations originally opened in July of 2021 and began fulfillment in February 2022. It then took until October of that year for the system to be available for purchase without a reservation. Of course, the Steam Controller is a significantly less complicated piece of tech than the Steam Deck – most importantly it doesn’t use any RAM, else it would be affected by the ongoing RAM shortage – so hopefully Valve will be able to crank out the units much faster this time around.
Meanwhile, it looks like Valve is finally ramping up to launching the Steam Machine soon, but we’re still waiting to find out how much it will cost.
Bo Moore is IGN’s Senior Manager of Tech. You can find him online @usebomswisely.
