Just noticed all models of the steam deck are marked as OOS now.
I know the LCD models were going but the other oled models were still good.
Did I miss any news about there being a freeze on the sales from Valve or any info about this?
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Rampocalypse is to blame. They’re simply not manufacturing any more units until memory prices drop (since raising prices on the SD would be a PR nightmare and they wouldn’t be able to eat the margins without that).
Source?
Since its just the US only I think Tariffs might be to blame. Valve might be just waiting for another swing in the whims of the administration then bring another batch in. Valve can do that as they don’t have to worry about stock price tanking.
There are two tracks of thought here.
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The US Tariffs are raising the cost too high. So US inventory is not being restocked.
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The DRAM constraints are raising the cost to manufacture too high. That affects both the RAM and SSD in the system. This would affect all manufacturing of the Steam Deck.
As for it only being the US, they’re not going to be shifting international inventory after already situating it in more local distribution centers and dealing with customs. So the question comes down to, are the international stores/distribution centers still being restocked, or is everything on hold and the US just happens to be the first to sell out?
It’s probably both. If they have limited manufacturing due to RAM prices, then they are not going to sell them in the US, due to tariffs increasing the cost further. Any supply they do have is probably going to Europe and others.
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Valve has an absurd amount of money, they could easily eat the loss if they wanted to.
There’s a reason valve has an absurd amount of money.
Yes, having a quasi-monopoly on selling PC games online. They are constantly burning money.
And do they eat the loss on this quasi-monopoly, or do they make a healthy profit?
It means that they can spend money on “hobby projects” like employing gamedev teams that don’t actually ship anything and prototype until everybody leaves with boreout or their other hardware endeavours, the Deck itself isn’t even that profitable. Throw it on the wall and see what sticks is a luxurious innovation strategy that can only be employed if you make that much money.
You’re so close. And if the deck is already unprofitable, then might they be unwilling to incur further losses on it if significant fundamentals changed?
Also lol are you an employee of Valve or Tim Sweeney or something? Because why would anyone be upset at this, it benefits the consumer in almost every way one can think of. I’m no fan of corporations and Steam has some enshittification in it like forced updates, but come on.
I’m not upset. I was answering that Valve hasn’t huge capital because they hoard the money.
The goal of any business is not to eat the loss, if its not important for survival. The Steam Deck is not crucial for operation of their business. Compared to consoles where its their only income (usually) and they depend on the number of sold units. Also compared to consoles, Valve is not in a position where they heavily compete on price and need to bring it down to price of competition.
In short, there is no need for Valve to eat the cost. It’s already a good price too.
Valve build products they want to use, they just happen to sell them to the rest of us aswell.
All models are in stock in the UK
Sounds like tariffs in the US are to blame then
It could also be that inventory isn’t being replenished anywhere, and US runs out first because of highest sales volume.
This seems likely.
Considering the chip shortages, it would make a lot of sense to stop producing the old products for a while in order to build up stock for the new products.
Here in Germany / Europe the OLED models are still available.
