Last week, Valve dropped the price for the Steam Controller up to 90%, making the gamepad go for £4 or $5. This comes after the Steam Controller was discontinued in November of 2019, giving the controller a four-year run. Unfortunately, the controller did not live up to its hype nor was it overly popular with players. However, Valve has promised to maintain support to current users of the controller.
In an attempt to dump the remaining stock, Valve shaved large the price to bargain bin deals, and now has issued a statement claiming that they took in too many orders. Valve started issuing refunds on orders seemingly out of the blue, and some orders that were refunded were even stated to have already been shipped. Valve did issue statement saying that there were more orders than hat they could fulfill.
This is not the first piece of hardware that Valve has released and failed to make a big enough splash. The Steam Machine was the first to be introduced. It was a prebuilt computer designed to interface with Steam much like a home console. The Steam Machine died quickly as it couldn’t compete with other consoles nor offered enough of a convenience over other computers. Next to go was the Steam Link, a piece of hardware that allowed people to access their Steam library on other devices such as their TVs. The Steam Link was relatively well-received but the production of the machine was also cancelled.
Now it is the controller’s turn to go, the gamepad was not able to keep up with other controllers that could interface with computers nor are controllers often preferred over keyboard and mouse, the setup that is often perceived as superior. Now that the outstanding reserve of Steam Controllers is officially gone, the controller has turned from a gimmick device to a collector’s relic.