Medan tredjepartstillverkare kommer att kunna släppa sina egna Steam Machines, kommer det enbart att vara Valve själva som tillverkar kontrollerna. Valve-anställda Greg Coomer förklarar för IGN varför tillverkningen inte kommer att licensieras ut:
"It's not really because we're super anxious to get in the hardware business and we think it's the best way to turn 90 degrees and start racing toward success in hardware and making money in that way. It's really because we want the controllers to exist.
"We want them to have the attributes that we think are important, that allow people to play all the games on Steam, and we didn't think that it was really going to be possible to outsource the design for manufacturing and the finishing of the controller in a way that would allow third parties to take from us an idea or a reference design and bring it to market soon enough.
"We just think that, for now, at least, we have to do that ourselves. So we're going to be doing high volume production of the controller for ourselves."