The Steam Controller went up for pre-order on May 4 and like clockwork the stock was depleted so fast you’d think people’s lives depended on buying one. Like most high-popularity items, it was the result of a mix of genuine customers and scalpers trying to do what they do best and ruin things for everyone, but Valve is fighting back with a new reservation queue.
Going forward, and likely for the foreseeable future, Valve will require customers to hop in a reservation queue in an effort to prevent stock problems like what happened the first time around. While this won’t necessarily be a scalper-proof system, it’s better than doing nothing at all and Valve seems to recognize that. This paired with its willingness to ensure more stock is flowing in should do a pretty good job at making scalpers’ efforts useless. Of course, reservations alone won’t stop scalpers. That’s why Valve is also instituting several requirements to be able to place a reservation.
The reservation queue for the Steam Controller has a few requirements
Putting a reservation system in place is a good start, but Valve knows it would need to take things further by issuing some requirements. First, you need to have a Steam account that’s in good standing to even reserve a controller. You’re also limited to one controller per account. So you won’t have a bunch of resellers trying to buy up multiples and sell them all at highly inflated prices.
Valve is also requiring users to have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27, 2026. That should help stop people from making a bunch of new accounts just to get controllers for each one. Valve says that the reservation queue is opening up again on May 8 at 10AM Pacific Standard Time. That’s tomorrow morning, so you’ll want to be ready. Once you make a reservation to buy a controller, your place in line is saved. Customers who have already purchased the Steam Controller are also not able to make a reservation for the time being. Additionally, those who do reserve will have 72 hours maximum to make the purchase.
It’s worth noting that this is a system Valve is putting in place for Steam Hardware. So the same system should be set up for the Steam Machine and Steam Frame as well. Which will both arguably harder to get and more tempting for scalpers. The Steam Machine was suspected to have launched by now but Valve confirmed a delay to revisit the price, and because the memory crisis has made manufacturing more difficult.
The post Valve begins reservation queue to fight Steam Controller scalpers appeared first on Android Headlines.
​Â
