Valve confirms Steam Deck stock shortages amid AI-fuelled memory and storage crisis

Valve has acknowledged that the Steam Deck’s availability has been disrupted by global shortages of RAM and storage, with the handheld remaining sold out in various regions, including the US.

The details:

• As spotted on social media, the availability of all Steam Deck variations has been limited in recent months, with systems remaining sold out for prolonged periods of time. Valve has now updated the Steam Deck OLED store page to state that the device “may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages,” confirming that component supply, rather than demand alone, is behind the recent stock issues.
• Both the 512GB and 1TB versions of the Steam Deck OLED are currently out of stock, as is the 256GB LCD system. However, Valve previously announced that the older LCD model was no longer in production back in November, meaning that the system is officially sold out for good via the official store.
• The shortages in memory and storage components stem from the rapid growth of AI technology as companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft continue to purchase large quantities of hardware in order to power their AI platforms. As a result, PC users have seen massive price hikes for all types of DDR4 and DDR5 RAM, with reports that Sony is even debating delaying the release of the PlayStation 6 to 2028 or 2029 in response to the shortages.