After mysteriously going out of stock with little to no acknowledgement from Valve, the Steam Deck OLED is now back in stock on Steam… but there’s a huge sting in the tail as prices have leapt up by around 35% in the UK and over 40% in other regions.
The new prices are (inclusive of VAT where applicable):
- Steam Deck OLED 512GB: Now $789 USD; CAD 1,129; EUR 779; GBP 649; AUD 1,199; PLN 3,279
- Steam Deck OLED 1TB: Now $949 USD; CAD 1,349; EUR 919; GBP 779; AUD 1,429; PLN 3,879
That’s a huge increase from £479 to £649 in the UK, while in the US it’s jumped from $549 to $789.
Valve writes, “Steam Deck itself hasn’t changed; these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole. We’ll keep you updated if anything changes.”
The rise in prices for the Steam Deck were practically inevitable as Valve’s plans for new hardware releases in 2026, including the Steam Machine PC, were thrown into disarray through rising component costs through the end of 2025 and first half of this year. The AI boom (and arguable bubble) has seen AI companies buying up capacity and tranches of memory and other components in order to fill server farms that are planned for construction in the coming years. This has even seen capacity for legacy components reduced as production lines are pivoted to the more immediately lucrative deals.
The problem for Valve is that they are a minuscule hardware company when stacked up against a Nintendo, Sony or Apple. They won’t be placing orders in as great a volume as those companies, and likely came to the end of their existing production contracts prior to the Steam Deck OLED going out of stock in the last couple months. New production contracts in the volumes that the Steam Deck is likely to sell going forward would be subject to higher prices closer to the market rate.
It’s a real shame, as the Steam Deck had been holding a lower price point than many handheld PCs released in the following years. It also indicates that the Steam Machine is going to have an even more painful price than was originally expected.
Source: Valve
