You know Valve. If you grew up in the late 1990s, then their seminal title Half-Life defines the modern first-person shooter in a way that Doom pushed the ball forward only a few years earlier. But if you weren’t already gaming by the time Y2K rolled around, Valve is tied up intrinsically with its Steam platform, which revolutionized digital game distribution.

Now everything is Steam-branded. Hell, now there’s even a Valve Steam Controller, which was so eagerly anticipated by PC gamers that when it debuted for sale on May 4, 2026, it sold out in just 30 minutes.

Considering that it retails for $99, I’d advise patience and not caving to temptation by paying the $300 asking price that’s common right now on eBay. Buy one of these instead if you just can’t wait for the Steam Controller to restock.

a unique-ish controller

With the Steam Controller, Valve is attempting to address the comparative imprecision of a typical gamepad’s control sticks by incorporating track pads and gyro tracking into the controller, alongside the obligatory control sticks. Valve, being a major name in peripherals that nonetheless releases hardware infrequently, built up so much anticipation that eager owners (and eager resellers) jumped on the initial batch when it went up for sale.

But the Steam Controller isn’t the only gamepad to incorporate these features. And unlike Valve’s gamepad, you can still find the Hori Horipad in stock. Its capacitive touch control sticks add a bit of trackpad-like precision over the traditional control sticks.

Don’t overlook the fact that even though it’s a Sony product, you can use the PlayStation DualSense for PC gaming. Sony makes quality controllers. After all, they’ve been doing it for 30 years. Like the Hori gamepad, it’s less bulky than the Valve Steam Controller, too, which you may or may not like all that much.

So, chin up. You missed the initial batch of the Valve Steam Controller, but so did almost everybody. And if you happened to have stumbled across this article well after publication, give Valve’s official page a look to see if it’s been restocked.