The ongoing RAMaggedon immediately caused stock shortages and delays across the tech sector, and Steam company Valve has been heavily affected. With the worldwide RAM shortages, Valve’s Steam Deck has suffered from major stock issues and its upcoming Steam Machine has been delayed.
As Valve struggles with RAM supply, the company has publicly asked for assistance at the annual Game Developers Conference with securing hardware for its hardware. With the company looking to produce both Steam Machine and its new VR platform Steam Frame, alongside additional Steam Deck handhelds, Valve is struggling to produce its announced products.
At a discussion at their conference at GDC, Valve explained that the new run of hardware has been designed as “players want to play in more places” away from their desktop PC. Additionally, the company teased that “more” products should be added to the Steam ecosystem in the future.
Directly addressing the RAM shortage, a Valve spokesperson opened up the supply issues to the audience. “If you have a line on a bunch of RAM, we are in the market and would like to buy it,” the spokesperson told the audience of developers and hardware manufactures.
At the time of writing, the ongoing RAM shortage is expected to last until at least 2027 with prices continually rising as a result. Just recently, Samsung—one of the largest producers of DRAM—rose its prices by “over 100%”, and is reportedly planning even more price increases as the year continues.
In a report by Cirini analyst Jukan, it was claimed that memory prices may even exceed already projected numbers due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. As the region is one of the largest suppliers of pure helium, an integral gas for memory fabrication, manufactures are finding it even harder to produce hardware.
Right now, manufacturing any hardware is becoming increasingly difficult, especially for a company that produces such low amounts of units. While Steam hardware does have a very dedicated user base, the hardware is not a major seller with the Steam Deck selling around five million units since 2022.
