The Steam Deck is out of stock, at the worst time. Blame RAM

Even after the cheapest model was retired, the Steam Deck handheld remains the most affordable, flexible way to get your hands (ha) on PC gaming hardware. But not at the moment. All three models of Steam Deck hardware are now showing as out of stock on Valve’s US page. Canada is also out of stock, but models are still available in the UK and EU, according to a quick VPN search.

Update, Tuesday, February 17th: Valve confirmed that the lack of current Steam Deck stock is “due to memory and storage shortages.” There’s no indication of when more will be available. The original story continues below:

This isn’t the first time that the Steam Deck has been in short supply. But following the retirement of the original, $400 USD design, and after Valve admitted that it had to delay pricing and availability announcements for its upcoming Steam hardware, it’s a bad look. The Steam Deck is definitely the leader by a wide margin in the handheld gaming PC space, with its various imitators only garnering a fraction of its sales, even with the backing of huge PC manufacturers like Asus and Lenovo.

Right now is the time that Valve needs to double down on Steam as a gaming platform, to get people excited for the console-adjacent Steam Machine. It’s also when people entering the PC gaming space need cheaper options than over a thousand bucks for a nominally “mid-range” desktop. Microsoft is feeling the heat as both gamers and regular users are fed up with Windows 11’s AI antics and overall bugs. If you’ll forgive the cliche, the iron is hot, it’s time to strike.

Unfortunately, it’s also the time for incredibly expensive memory from the RAM crunch. The “AI” industry buildout is constraining memory supply and raising prices for tons of consumer electronics, especially high-memory PCs. The Steam Deck’s 16GB of shared LPDDR5 RAM isn’t exactly massive, but even that seems to be a lot to ask for these days — there are rumors that laptop makers will slide back the “midrange” standard to just 8GB, which is less than I recommend for Windows 11.

That being said, I don’t think this indicates a large-scale production issue for Valve, at least not yet. With availability still showing in Europe (Valve only sells hardware directly in the US, Canada, UK, and EU), there’s no sign of a full worldwide shortage. It could just be that Valve has sold out a buildup of hardware from the holidays, and is a little slow to get it back up in a traditionally lax period of retail sales. Still, with all the other maddening woes of being a PC gamer in 2026, little grey buttons on the bottom of the Steam Deck store page are not a welcome sight.