Last week, gamers began noticing that the Steam Deck portable console was becoming unavailable for purchase, and Valve has now explained that the reason lies in a shortage of RAM.
Last week, gamers began noticing that the Steam Deck portable console was becoming unavailable for purchase, and Valve has now explained that the reason lies in a shortage of RAM.
Valve has updated the store page selling the Steam Deck to indicate that the console will not be available in the near future due to a memory crunch caused by the development of artificial intelligence infrastructure, Kotaku reports.
«The Steam Deck OLED may be temporarily unavailable in some regions due to memory and storage shortages. The Steam Deck LCD 256GB is no longer in production and will no longer be available after the sale,» the company noted.
Valve has yet to provide a clear indication of when the $550 Steam Deck OLED will be back in stock or whether the console will see a price increase. The company released the original $400 Steam Deck LCD model last fall, which sold out and was discontinued.
Steam Deck has become the latest victim of the expanding AI infrastructure, in which companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in building data centers to provide the computing power to run models like ChatGPT and Claude Code.
Meanwhile, markets that rely on affordable video and RAM are taking a hit. Sony is rumored to be considering delaying the PS6 until 2029, Nintendo will likely have to increase the price of the Switch 2 just a year after its release, and AAA game developers need to optimize their designs so that players don’t have to spend an extra hundred dollars to upgrade to 32GB of RAM.
According to the latest reports, Valve is still planning to release the Steam Machine PC, Steam Frame VR headset, and Steam Controller in the first half of 2026. But due to global memory shortages, the company is still unable to reveal any details regarding pricing or a specific release date for the gadgets.
Recall that the global RAM market is experiencing an unprecedented crisis caused by the explosive demand for chips for artificial intelligence. DRAM prices have increased by 171,8% over the year and have even exceeded the growth rate of the value of gold. A 64 GB DDR5 memory kit already costs over $500 — more expensive than a PlayStation 5 game console.
dev.ua looked into what the DRAM shortage threatens for ordinary users, who is to blame, and how long the crisis will last.
