It only took a month to turn a Steam Deck deposit into a purchase

In case you’re thinking about joining the queue for Valve’s PC handheld, the time to buy a Steam Deck is getting shorter and shorter. You can take Valve at its word.

I was one of the people who rushed to put down a deposit for Valve’s Steam Deck the first moment that I could. However, I pulled out of the queue after seeing how long others were having to wait near its launch. Now, after seeing time and time again that Valve has increased production of the Deck to shorten wait times, it eventually made me rejoin the queue, if only as an experiment to see how quickly I could get to the front of the line.

As it turns out, I only had to wait a month. I placed a deposit for the $529 256GB model on August 25th, and I just received my email confirmation that it was available for purchase. That wasn’t so bad. With a wait this short, there’s no reason to pay higher-than-retail costs for a Deck through sites like StockX or Craigslist unless you’re truly desperate.

Valve originally expected that some reservations wouldn’t be fulfilled until Q4 2022 or later, though the company is now confident that it will meet all of that demand by the end of 2022. That’s remarkable progress, especially since it recently expanded reservations to more regions, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. All the while, it’s been improving the Deck’s software and game compatibility.

So, if you’re thinking of gifting a Steam Deck to yourself or to some lucky person in your life for the holidays, putting down the required $5 deposit at this Steam page should give you a month (if not a little less time) to count up all of your pennies to make sure you have enough.