Valve is doubling Steam Deck shipments, so you might get yours faster

Valve is doubling the number of Steam Decks it ships to customers, the company announced Monday. “Production has picked up, and after today we’ll be shipping more than double the number of Steam Decks every week!” Valve said in a tweet from the official Steam Deck account. And in response to a question from my colleague Sean Hollister, Valve designer Lawrence Yang spelled out the change more clearly: “in previous weeks we were shipping x units / week to customers, starting this week we’ll be shipping 2x units / week.”

If you’ve been eagerly refreshing your inbox every Monday and Thursday for the chance to order your Steam Deck reservation, the increased production could be a sign that you might be able to buy your device sooner than you expected. My own reservation hasn’t changed from its Q3 estimate on the Steam Deck Steam page, but maybe now that email will arrive sometime in the earlier side of the quarter. And if you’re also in that Q3 window, you should start keeping an eye on your inbox on June 30th, as Valve said the first Q3 order emails will go out then.

You will want to keep a close eye out for that email, as Valve only gives you 72 hours to actually complete an order once it’s sent out. If you do miss that window, though, Valve suggests you contact Steam Support — the company recently clarified that it offers a grace period of “a few days.”

The Steam Deck has remained at the top of the Steam charts for nine of the last 11 weeks, according to SteamDB. That ranking tracks top sellers by revenue — given that the Steam Deck starts at $399, a few Steam Deck orders can equate to a lot of sales of any individual game — but it’s still an indication that Valve is selling the handheld gaming PCs as fast as it can make them and that there was quite a bit of demand.

But it still has plenty of catching up to do: an unofficial tracker compiled by Reddit user Fammy suggests that Valve is still fulfilling orders of the premium 512GB model in the UK from the first hour of when they went on sale in July 2021. According to that tracker, Valve is still fulfilling the first day’s worth of reservations in the US as well.

While Steam Deck production has increased, the official dock was delayed earlier this month from its “late spring” release timeline. But when it arrives, it will have upgraded specs from what Valve originally announced.