Valve has posted a warning on the Steam Deck website, advising prospective buyers that the handheld may be intermittently out of stock in regions around the world due to ongoing memory and storage shortages. This follows the revelation that the popular handheld has sold out in the United States, a situation exacerbated by those same technical shortages.
In December, Valve quietly ended production of the LCD Steam Deck model, bringing an end to the cheapest version of the handheld. Once the stock of that device has been depleted, no more will ever be made available.
Steam Deck Suffers from Shortages
If you venture onto the Steam Deck website operated by Valve, you’ll be greeted with a message warning you that the Steam Deck OLED model (both the 512 GB and 1 TB variants) ‘may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages.’
It was a few days back that the handheld sold out in the United States, and now we know why, but nobody is surprised.
Valve recently delayed a new sweep of hardware, including the Steam Machine, Frame, and Controller, because of these ongoing issues with supply lines.
It all started in Q4 2025, when the price of RAM skyrocketed to recognize the AI-driven demand soaking up the market’s share. The situation worsened when 2026 kicked off, with NVIDIA shutting down production of a new GPU in 2026 to focus on AI data centers. It also caused Sony to suggest the PlayStation 6 won’t surface until at least 2029.
And now, the Steam Deck is feeling the acute burn of the shortages.
As arguably the best-received gaming handheld on the market, it comes as no surprise to learn that Valve is struggling to fulfil sales of the Steam Deck due to these shortages.
Were you planning on buying a Steam Deck? Let us know if you’re impacted by these shortages on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that there’s a new Tarkov gift bundle
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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