I know. I was expecting issues, though. Steam pretty much always has issues with their site at the start of sales and new hardware launches, so this was entirely predictable.

On the flip side, every time this has happened when I was around to notice, there were obvious signs the site was failing from the get-go. Slow page loads, error messages, pages just not loading at all, etc. This time around, the site loaded up fine. Page navigation was quick as normal. Buttons worked. Cart worked. Checkout seemed to be working.

Then BAM. Error message when paying. I tried a few different payment methods and even checked on other devices.

So, I stepped away for a bit. Came back and I was surprised that the controllers were still in stock. Figured I’d try again. That time, I got a different error message when I attempted to pay. I thought maybe there’s something fishy with my cart/session so I removed the controller from my cart, expecting to re-add it and try checking out again. Only, when I went back to the controller page, it had flipped over to out of stock. It was literally only a matter of maybe 20 seconds since I’d last checked the page when it was showing as in stock. Missed it by that much.