Disclaimer: This was mostly for my own curiosity, and the estimates are probably flawed in one way or another.
I was wondering how much of the Steam Controller sales went to scalpers. Lots of websites have reported on scalpers reselling the controller, but most of those articles just focus on how much is being asked for the controller, not how many are actually available/being sold. That doesn't really tell us much by itself.
Looking at ebay's sold items, there's about ~240* listed Steam Controllers that have been sold since the announcement.
There's an additional 20 current listing I see for the new Steam controller, that haven't sold yet (weirdly, almost all the unsold listing are located in Australia, with only a single remaining listing for a US seller).
Next question is how many Steam Controllers were available to buy. Approximate estimate for the US was around 35,000-40,000 controllers*. Europe would have it's own supply.
So while there were scalpers, it doesn't seem like they were responsible for a meaningful percentage of the sales.
Additional notes: Valve limited controller sales to 2 per transaction, but didn't limit it to 2 per account. This is speculated to have been a mistake, but still would have limited how many scalpers could have gotten with how hard it was to complete a transaction.
*Math section:
5 pages of results for steam controllers in the ebay sold section, at 60 items per page, so a max of 300 sold. However, none of those pages are just the 2026 Steam Controller, a lot are actually the classic steam controller, hori steam controller, steam link, or other controllers that advertise that they're for steam. I didn't do an exact count for all 5 pages, but only 48 out of 60 results on page 4 were the steam controller 2026, so around ~240 units.
The number of controllers sold in the US is based on the shipment of controllers Valve received. It was 28,500 lbs/12,970 kg. The controller and puck weigh 308g, which would divide out to something like 42,000 controllers in the shipment. After adding in additional packaging, 35,000-40,000 is a more likely estimate. The shipment officially contained 40 packages, so possibly 1000 controllers per package.
Am I fucking crazy or is 35000 controllers like a shockingly low amount of controllers????? There’s like 300+ million ppl in the states and I imagine there’s probably more than 35k people in my state alone that want one.. what is actually up with that small number??
Valve doesn't have the scale.
They're nowhere near as big of a company as Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony.
FFS they have like under 500 total employees, roughly 350.
For many legal purposes in the US, they are literally a small business.
They retooled the place that was making Steam Decks... into being the place that makes Steam Controllers.
Because that would be more affordable than renting out and kitting out an entirely new production facility somewhere near Shenzen or whatever.
They're not big enough to get first dibs, preferential contract bulk pricing, from component manufacturers.
In the ocean they're swimming in?
They're bass or salmon, compared to dolphins, sharks, orcas, whales.
I made a joke about this being an 'artisinal, small batch' controller in another thread, but it basically isn't a joke, if you understand the scales involved.
The number of employees is pretty meaningless in this context, and it's telling that is the only metric you cite. The number of active users would be far more meaningful.
Oh its telling of me, huh?
Tell me you've never worked in an industry that made or moved actual things without telling me you've never worked in an industry that made or moved actual things.
Active number of users on servers you are paying someone else to physically operate and maintain has nothing to do with orchestrating an international manufacturing and shipping program.
Its an entirely different animal.
Yeah because that's totally not something you can outsource just as easily.
You're arguing as if Valve is a logistics company.
I was an executive level data analyst for an international logistics middle man company, based in Seattle.
Yes, correct, you cannot infact outsource that just as easily, it is, as I said, an entirely different animal, with many different kinds of problems and costs, and potential problems and potential costs.
An enormous amount of logistics ultimately comes down to who knows, who, who introduces who to who, and who has what kind of reputation, with who.
You either pay a firm like the one I worked for a considerable premium in order to have them manage every single step of the process, every single link in the chain... or you try to do all that on your own, maybe hire a few new expert people to figure out how to do that.
I am arguing as if Valve is not a logistics company.
You are arguing as if you do not know anything about logistics at all.
Yeah that explains why you think like a manager at a logistics company, not like one at a digital services provider that sells hardware on the side.
Their employees aren't moving boxes around. Their employee count couldn't be any less relevant to their logistical capabilities. If anyone has money to throw at the problem, it's Valve.
I think it's important to remember that the last steam controller did not do well financially. It's very likely that this is a first run to test the waters a bit with actual orders before ordering 2 million controllers where 90% end up in warehouses.
Also we know that they've been struggling with manufacturing and everything overseas is completely fucked right now. Could be that the wanted to get something out the door now vs indefinitely waiting longer.
Yeah true enough, it’s just super frustrating being one of the people that wanted one to see it sell out almost instantly.. THEN to see scalpers selling it for $250 smfh. I can’t wait for another batch to drop.
How many people do you think really want a steam controller? It costs more than an xbox or ps5 factory controller. TMR isn't unique to the steam controller, the ps4/5 controllers have a trackpad for basic navigating the desktop on a couch, and you can only use it with steam games. (GN review) For any normal person there's very little reason to get it over the myriad of other great controllers out there.
Valve themselves even said they're targeting a niche.
Part of it is just a genuine gamble.
You can try to model demand for a kind of thing that has never specifically existed before.
You will probably fuck that up at first.
Early signs point to -> they significantly underestimated demand.
By how much exactly... shrug?
Also, there's basically no way you can find no difference between the trackpads on the Steam Controller, and the trackpad on the PS controllers, unless you've never used a Steam Deck or the Steam Input system.
Does a PS 4/5 allow you to fully remap all the controls of a game to literally whatever you want?
Add in macros, turbos, input chords, make a joycon be a mouse, make a trackpad be a joycon, or open and navigate a custom ingame menu you made up, or be a new button pad?
Make motion controls activate under whatever conditions you specify, and map that motion to whatever input you want?
Never said there's no difference, just that it's good enough to navigate the desktop on a couch.
Not natively, but they're a normal directinput device so there's plenty of software out there to do it. Plus steam input for steam games.
Unlike some comments here, I don't think this is a "test run." Valve just doesn't like to sit on inventory. Where most companies let some stock build up before opening the flood gates, Valve just puts a product up for sale when the first shipping container comes out of the factory. Many customers end up feeling left out if they can't make the first wave, but technically the majority of customers get the product earlier than they otherwise would have, so I'm sure Valve sees it as a win-win.
We'll probably see a steady supply of similar batches for a while. The Deck preorders shipped much the same way.
Yeah, people in general seem to not understand that stock sitting in a warehouse = you burning money to pay for renting that warehouse, or space in that warehouse.
You have to be... mega-giant huge, your own logistiscs system, for that to basically not be the case, you have to be Amazon, Walmart, something like that.
Even then, that factor still exists, its just mitigated by the overwhelming scale.
And actually, with... oil/gas basically now permanently notched up to another tier, even in the best case scenario... this pressure just gets worse.
Also, even before the Deck, the Index was basically the same way.
Yeah, I work at a plant where this is an ongoing concern. If we overstock product, we have to rent trailers to store the excess. The price works out to about $12 per pallet per month. It's not much, but it's also not nothing, and if we were in a more urban area, I could see that price quickly getting higher.
Yep, you got it.
And yep, high property value areas?
Yep, gets worse fast.
You end using something along the lines of an overflow lot, halfway across the city, and that overflow lot probably doesn't have the same level of access, security, reliable climate control, etc, as your main warhouse / storage site.