Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney slams Valve over Steam Deck price hikes

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney criticized Valve for significantly raising the price of the Steam Deck, noting that the increase far exceeds industry norms. While many consoles have seen modest price hikes... Read original →

The Steam Deck’s sharp price hike reflects not just cost pass-through but a structural squeeze on consumer electronics supply chains from the AI infrastructure boom. High-end DRAM and advanced packaging capacity are being monopolized by NVIDIA and AMD for AI accelerators, starving handheld SoCs and LPDDR5X of allocation. Valve’s decision to raise prices—rather than downgrade specs—exposes its weak bargaining power in TSMC (Taiwan, China) and Samsung foundry ecosystems due to lack of vertical integration. Epic’s critique is less about ethics and more about positioning, as it too faces soaring BOM costs from the AI compute arms race. Microsoft and Sony may exploit this to reinforce value narratives around Xbox/PlayStation handheld variants. If Steam Machine launches above $1,000, it will collide with a shrinking gaming PC market. Over the next 18 months, consumer GPU and memory pricing will remain hostage to AI datacenter procurement cycles, further marginalizing standalone hardware vendors.