After mysteriously going out of stock with little to no acknowledgment from Valve, the Steam Deck OLED is now back in stock on Steam… but there’s a huge problem as prices have jumped around 35% in the UK and over 40% in other regions.
The new prices are (VAT included where applicable):
- Steam Deck OLED 512 GB: Now $789 USD; 1,129 CAD; 779 euros; £649; AUD$1,199; 3,279 PLN
- Steam Deck OLED 1TB: Now $949 USD; 1,349 CAD; 919 euros; £779; AUD$1,429; PLN 3,879
This represents a considerable increase, from £479 to £649 in the UK, while in the US it went from $549 to $789.
Valve writes: “The Steam Deck itself has not changed; these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry. We will keep you updated if anything changes.”
The Steam Deck price hike was all but inevitable, as Valve’s plans for new hardware releases in 2026, including the Steam Machine PC, were upended by rising component costs through the end of 2025 and the first half of this year. The AI boom (and its questionable bubble) has seen AI companies purchase capacity, memory slices, and other components in order to fill server farms planned to be built in the coming years. This has even led to a reduction in the capacity of existing components as production lines are geared towards immediately lucrative offerings.
The problem for Valve is that it’s a tiny hardware company compared to Nintendo, Sony, or Apple. They won’t be placing orders as large as those companies and likely reached the end of their existing production contracts before the Steam Deck OLED went out of stock over the past couple of months. New production contracts in the volumes that Steam Deck is likely to sell in the future would be subject to higher prices, closer to the market rate.
This is a real shame, because the Steam Deck was priced lower than many laptops released in later years. This also indicates that the Steam Machine will have an even more painful price tag than initially expected.
Source: Valve
