If you haven’t done the whole Massdrop thing before, here’s the basic gist of how it works: Someone says, “Hey I want this thing, does anyone else want one?" Once enough people say they want it, Massdrop contacts the manufacturer and says, “Hey if we buy X of these, what kind of discount can you give us?" The manufacturer then comes back and is like “Hmm, well if you buy X, and we don’t have to do anything, we can sell them for $Y." It’s basically like buying something wholesale, but with those savings (which usually make up a retailer’s profit margin) passed on to the buyers. In this particular instance, that means getting a SteelSeries Stratus XL MFI controller, which normally sells for $69.99, and Amazon sells for $60.08 for $29.99. Even with shipping, that’s close to the cheapest we’ve seen this controller, and that’s including refurbished units. These are brand new.

Here’s what you’ve got to do to take advantage of this group buy:

1. Sign up for Massdrop if you haven’t already. (You need to be logged in to see the group buys, which is weird, but, whatever.)
2. Click this link to get to the SteelSeries Stratus drop. (Or just search for SteelSeries on their site.)
3. Join the drop.
4. Wait (as of this writing) six days for it to finish, at which point the controllers are expected to ship by May 13th.

Now, the way Massdrop works is pretty cool. So, right now 13 people are committed to the $29.99 price, and once 15 people commit (which will likely happen very quickly after I publish this) everyone unlocks the $29.99 price. When you join, you can choose to either join the drop, or join at the lower price. It seems sort of inevitable that it won’t hit $29.99, so, there’s not much to worry about. Other than that, there’s really no strings attached, it’s super cool how this works out and lets people score really cool deals on all sorts of things.

MFi accessories rarely go on sale, and when they do you’re typically just buying up old refurbished units. We’ve posted about a few similar drops before, and everyone seemed really happy with them. Additionally, we’ve reviewed the SteelSeries Stratus XL controller, and really like it. More recently, SteelSeries has released the Nimbus, which charges over Lightning instead of using AA batteries, and it’s really a matter of personal preference as to whether it’s worth the premium to have onboard rechargable over AA batteries. Honestly, the battery in these things last so incredibly long it’s not like it matters a whole lot. I’ve got a few of these controllers, and they work with every vaguely recent iOS device including the Apple TV.