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Valve put the price of the newly-restocked Steam Deck through the roof yesterday, jacking the cost of the 1TB model to $949, a kidney-punch increase of nearly 50%. Ain't nobody buying Steam Decks at that price, I thought to myself in the immediate aftermath of the price hike, and as with so many things, I was wrong.
Less than 24 hours after Steam Deck stock was replenished at its new price, it's sold out again in North America—or selling out, as the case might be. A note on the Steam Deck store page now states that "Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages," and I have run into that myself: When I first started writing this story, both Steam Deck models were listed as out of stock, but refreshing the page may 20 minutes later showed that the 512GB was back in stock, with an estimated shipping time of 3-5 days. But I refreshed again, and it was once again out of stock.
As noted by Ars Technica, this situation could go on for a while to come. AI-fuelled component shortages are very much an issue (and one that looks like it's going to get worse), but Valve has another machine to figuratively feed: The Steam Machine, for now, is still expected to debut sometime in 2026, and so at least some of Valve's hardware inventory is going to have to go toward that.
Exactly how many Steam Decks sold since Valve announced they were back in stock isn't known, but it leads to an interesting question: If Valve can keep moving them even at these bonkers prices, what motivation does it have to bring those prices back down when component costs eventually drop? But I suppose that's dependent on component costs actually getting back to something resembling "normal," and I can't say I'm super confident in that ever happening. It's bleak out there, folks.
According to the Deck Scan website, which tracks Steam Deck availability in the US, UK, Europe, and Australia, there is limited stock available in other parts of the world, so keep mashing that refresh button if you really want one (and you have the cash to burn) and you might get lucky. If you happen to live in Australia, you could get even luckier: As of yesterday, the good ol' LCD model was still available there, and its price hasn't been touched. Get 'em while you can.
