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Valve’s Massive Price Hikes Just Ruined the Steam Deck

A near-$1,000 1TB Steam Deck OLED could mean a very pricey Steam Machine.
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If you didn’t already grab a Steam Deck OLED in the last few years, you may be out of luck. Valve’s nearly 3-year-old handheld PC now costs close to $1,000 for a version with 1TB of storage.

Valve had already discontinued the Steam Deck LCD in December 2025. On Wednesday, the makers of Steam spiked prices for all lingering OLED models. The 512GB Steam Deck OLED now costs $790, up from $550. The 1TB version will hit your wallet for $950, up from $650. The items were previously listed as “Sold Out” on Steam, but after the price hikes, they are available to buy once more. We don’t suggest you do.

In a blog post, Valve wrote, “Steam Deck itself hasn’t changed; these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole. We’ll keep you updated if anything changes.”

Valve still sells “certified refreshed” models for slightly cheaper. The refurbished 512GB Steam Deck OLED model costs $650, which is still more than its $500 launch price. You can find the 256GB LCD version for $320. That may be buyers’ best bet, so long as you augment your handheld with an SSD upgrade or a micro SD card.

We won’t advise that anybody spend $790 or more for Valve’s landmark handheld PC. For context, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X from last year, with a more powerful chip and a larger battery, costs $1,000 (at least, for now). The Lenovo Legion Go 2, which launched at nearly $1,350 for the top-end model, now costs $2,000.

The Steam Deck is not the most powerful handheld around, but it more than made up for it with its comparatively low price and the easy-breezy nature of SteamOS compared to Windows 11. Every major console maker has hiked prices, from the Xbox Series S/X to the PlayStation 5 and even Nintendo with its Switch 2, which now costs $500. With memory prices soaring, no gaming device maker is safe.

The news doesn’t spell good tidings for the price of the Steam Machine. Valve’s upcoming PC/console hybrid still doesn’t have an official cost or release date. Valve previously told Gizmodo it would sell its 6 x 6-inch SteamOS-based PC for the equivalent of similar PC components. There’s a chance that Valve managed to source a different supplier for Steam Machine memory separate from its Steam Deck. Given the rampant price hikes all across gaming hardware, we shouldn’t hold out much hope.

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