Valve has an absurd amount of money, they could easily eat the loss if they wanted to.
Comment on Steam Deck is out of stock in the US?
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Rampocalypse is to blame. They’re simply not manufacturing any more units until memory prices drop (since raising prices on the SD would be a PR nightmare and they wouldn’t be able to eat the margins without that).
PrinzKasper@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Fecundpossum@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There’s a reason valve has an absurd amount of money.
dukemirage@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yes, having a quasi-monopoly on selling PC games online. They are constantly burning money.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
And do they eat the loss on this quasi-monopoly, or do they make a healthy profit?
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
The goal of any business is not to eat the loss, if its not important for survival. The Steam Deck is not crucial for operation of their business. Compared to consoles where its their only income (usually) and they depend on the number of sold units. Also compared to consoles, Valve is not in a position where they heavily compete on price and need to bring it down to price of competition.
In short, there is no need for Valve to eat the cost. It’s already a good price too.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Valve can take the risk on doing actual innovation because they functionally have a large pool of ‘fun money’, that does not come with a board of shareholders attached to it demanding that it constantly be making next quater profits be as high as possible.
You save up that fun money fund, and when an actual good idea gets committed to, you can now actually just fund at least a moderately sized go at it.
… and, because its … you know, their money, with no shareholder or lender strings attached to it… they could fail completely, and then just eat the loss.
As opposed to now having to reorient other segments of the company to make more money to make up the difference to the board or lenders.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Sure, but we don’t know the limit of those budgets. And its not like Valve wouldn’t do innovation or try things out; otherwise there would be no improvemetns to the Steam store, no Steam Deck, no Steam Frame, no SteamOS, the controller, and they would not fund Linux projects and the FEX project, no Proton and so on. So I think its fair to say that Valve does all of that. Then to expect on top of that to lose money on selling hardware… when the hardware is already cheap and there is no need to.
artyom@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Source?
lordnikon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Since its just the US only I think Tariffs might be to blame. Valve might be just waiting for another swing in the whims of the administration then bring another batch in. Valve can do that as they don’t have to worry about stock price tanking.
halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
There are two tracks of thought here.
The US Tariffs are raising the cost too high. So US inventory is not being restocked.
The DRAM constraints are raising the cost to manufacture too high. That affects both the RAM and SSD in the system. This would affect all manufacturing of the Steam Deck.
As for it only being the US, they’re not going to be shifting international inventory after already situating it in more local distribution centers and dealing with customs. So the question comes down to, are the international stores/distribution centers still being restocked, or is everything on hold and the US just happens to be the first to sell out?