Valve confirms Steam Deck is out of stock due to memory and storage shortages — supply of popular gaming handheld in trouble because of massive AI demand

Valve has announced on the Steam Deck page that there is limited supply for the handheld console in some areas, with all three models on the site marked as “Out of stock”. The company said on the store page that the “Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages.” This is bad news for gamers, especially as the Steam Deck is one of the best handheld gaming PCs on the market.

The Steam Deck OLED is the latest victim of the AI boom, with data centers and AI hyperscalers using up the global supply of memory and storage chips. The Steam Deck LCD model was the first to go in Valve’s handheld lineup, with the company discontinuing the most affordable model in late 2025. Although it did not give a reason for axing the $399 handheld, one of the plausible explanations for the move is that the 256GB is no longer profitable because of the skyrocketing prices of NAND chips.

RAM prices are expected to continue rising this year, meaning the situation will likely go from bad to worse. Valve isn’t the only company to increase prices, cut production, or run out of stock — Apple admitted that it’s chasing memory supply and that the shortage would have a greater impact on its Q2 earnings. Even the most expensive Mac Studio units with 512GB of Unified Memory are on backorder for up to 6 weeks because of demand from OpenClaw users.

This is also a bad sign for the Steam Machine, which was expected to arrive during the first quarter of 2026, but has since been delayed by the company. Valve also said that it will not subsidize the living room PC console and that it’s expected to be priced competitively against entry-level gaming PCs. But with RAM, GPU, and SSD costs rising nearly every week, it seems that the console will break the $1,000 mark.

We first saw signs of the chip shortage affecting the Steam Deck last week, but this is the first time that Valve has acknowledged the lack of memory and storage chip supply. We hope that the company can find an alternative source for these chips so that it can resume orders and deliveries of its popular handheld. But if the shortage continues, gamers may have no choice but to go for the more expensive Asus ROG Xbox Ally X or Lenovo Legion Go 2 if they want a new gaming device right now.

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