Valve's $99 Steam Controller revival lasted precisely 30 minutes on May 4 before payment servers buckled and stock evaporated. Eager buyers hit endless error loops—'There seems to have been an error processing your request'—while bots allegedly scooped units for resale.

Scalpers wasted no time, flipping confirmed pre-orders on eBay for $200 to $400, more than quadruple retail in some cases. Valve's Bluesky mea culpa yesterday: 'ran out faster than we anticipated,' with a vague promise of restocks and a timeline 'soon.' Surprising no one who remembers past launches.

X lit up with frustration: one user fumed about checkout failures right before sold-out, another tallied the server crashes at 30 minutes flat. Reddit threads echo the chaos, advising wallet preloads for next time. Community consensus: skip the gougers, wait it out.

Valve underestimating demand is practically tradition. The real test is delivery on that restock—before scalpers turn controllers into collector's crypto.