Well, it finally happened. For a long time, Valve's Steam Deck has been a fantastic option for people who wanted to get into PC gaming but didn't want to pay current PC gaming prices. Unfortunately, it was a little too fantastic, as we began to see supply dry up worldwide, with Valve informing us that it was fighting to secure more hardware.

Whether or not the Steam Deck would get a price hike in response to RAM and storage price increases was on every gamer's mind, and now, Valve has pulled the trigger. The 512GB model has just had a price hike from $549 to $789, and the 1TB model didn't fare any better.

The Steam Deck OLED receives a nasty price hike in the face of hardware struggles

It wasn't a case of if, but when

Over on the Steam Deck's website, Valve has updated the pricing for its Steam Deck OLED models. The 512GB model has been increased from $549 to $789, while the 1TB version has gone from $649 to $949. If you're wondering about where the LCD model is, Valve discontinued it half a year ago, making the 512GB OLED the new entry-level model.

Unfortunately, this is a necessary evil for Valve. We've seen the company fight valiantly to get Steam Decks on the market at the same price, but it seemingly had a huge problem securing hardware to build them. Coupled with the recent Steam hardware delays and price revisions, a Steam Deck price hike was an inevitability.

So, where does this leave handheld gamers? Well, it does mean that the Steam Deck is no longer the entry-level portable gaming console that it once was. In fact, given that the 512GB OLED model just saw a 30% price hike, the Nintendo Switch 2 now looks like a far more attractive option, even more so than when the Steam Deck LCD was discontinued.