Back in February, due to the ongoing RAM shortage affecting the entire tech world, it became much harder to buy a new Steam Deck. Inventory sold out and wasn’t replaced. Valve now says it’s “working hard” on fixing the situation. But don’t expect any miraculous changes overnight, as Valve is dealing with the same global memory shortage as every other company.
On April 27, as part of Valve’s big Steam Controller marketing blitz, Valve programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais spoke to IGN about the Steam Deck and whether it would continue to be in and out of stock or if Valve had a timeframe for when its supply would stabilize. Griffais couldn’t share any “specific details” about Steam Deck availability, but did confirm Valve is “working hard” on improving the situation.
“As you are aware, there’s a lot of considerations right now with respect to shipping being difficult, and also memory shortages and all that,” said Griffais. “So we’ve been trying to work through that because we are very cognizant of the fact that there’s folks that want to get Steam Deck and they’re not currently able to get it. It’s available in some regions right now, but in general, it’s something that we’re working very hard on.”
How Valve is trying to avoid Steam Deck and Steam Machine shortages
Valve was recently asked if it had plans for how to avoid these types of hardware shortages in the future with devices like the upcoming Steam Machine and Steam Frame VR headset. According to Griffais, the key is all about the company making sure it has many “options” and “different manufacturers” to source the parts needed for all of its hardware offerings.
“I think in general, that’s something that we’re doing throughout our hardware design and production phase where we’re always cognizant of the fact that having a single source for a given part would put us downstream of potential shortages and things like that, in a way that affects the continuity of the supply and the price for end users,” said Griffais.
“So from the get-go, we’ve been trying to make sure that we have many options there, and that’s been proving really useful in this kind of climate, because we can work with all the big players and some of the smaller ones as well. That being said, the conditions around memory are pretty global right now, so there’s only so much that we can do.”
Griffais pointed to a past example during the “COVID times” when microcontrollers became hard to buy and shortages developed. But because Valve had so many different options for where to get the key part from, it was able to “navigate” that situation and keep supplies up while some other companies struggled.
“So we expect to be navigating the memory thing the same way,” said Griffais.
Thankfully, as Valve confirmed to Kotaku, its upcoming $100 Steam Controller isn’t affected by RAM shortages. The same can’t be said for the Steam Machine, which has suffered delays due to the RAMaggedon.