Steam Deck is out of stock in the US as Valve warns of ‘intermittent’ memory and storage shortages
The increased cost of RAM is making tech more expensive
Steam Deck is currently out of stock on the Steam store, as Valve warns it may be a regular occurrence.
Users have been reporting at various times over the past couple of weeks that the US Steam store often shows all Steam Deck models as sold out, and that while they do sometimes become available for sale again, the Sold Out signs are showing far more frequently than usual.
At the time of writing, all three models remain sold out on the Steam store in the US, though they are in stock in the UK store for now.
Valve has posted a notice on the Steam store informing players that Steam Deck availability may continue to fluctuate, due to the ongoing issue with memory costs.
“Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages,” the company’s statement reads. “Steam Deck LCD 256GB is no longer in production, and once sold out will no longer be available.”
Earlier this month Valve confirmed that it has delayed announcing the price and release date of its Steam Machine and Steam Frame devices due to the rapidly increasing price of PC components.
The entire tech industry is bracing for what some publications are dubbing ‘RAMmageddon’, as memory is becoming increasingly scarce and exponentially more expensive.
Whereas the global chip shortage of 2020-2023 was mainly down to disruptions in the supply chain due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the current memory shortage is mainly attributed to AI data centres buying up huge quantities of it, resulting in DRAM prices reportedly rising by as much as 172% throughout 2025.
Analysts and tech companies are both predicting that the situation could have drastic effects for the entire tech industry, with companies such as Apple and Tesla warning that production will be constrained in the future.
Bloomberg reported this week that Sony is considering holding back the release of PlayStation 6 to 2028 or 2029, given that the bottleneck of memory production could have a large impact on the availability and cost of new hardware.
Should the situation continue, analysts say further console price increases are also expected, as manufacturers look to absorb less of a financial hit from the growing cost of components.
Earlier this month Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said there are still no plans to increase the price of Switch 2 due to the increasing cost of memory, but that this could change if the situation isn’t resolved.
