Coming to us from Valve (the company behind the Half-Life series and the Steam PC gaming platform), the Steam Deck is a portable gaming PC that can run a vast number of games from Steam’s library. That being said, certain games will be ‘Steam Deck verified’, which means they will run particularly well on this titchy system.

There are three different Steam Deck prices, with each more expensive offering having more storage than its cheaper counterparts. The cheapest one doesn’t have an SSD, either, which could result in slower loading times.

The Steam Deck can connect up to any monitor, keyboard, mouse or other accessory that would work with a normal PC, making this a very versatile machine and a very exciting proposition among players. Keep on reading for more details!

Steam Deck pre-order and stock latest

To pre-order the Steam Deck, head to Valve’s dedicated Steam Deck pre-order page. Currently, Valve’s official website is the only place on the internet that has Steam Deck stock — that’s true in the UK and everywhere else on the planet.

No third-party retailers like Amazon, Currys or Argos have gotten in on the action yet, although we have a feeling that second-hand Steam Deck units could be showing up on eBay and CeX very soon indeed, probably with highly inflated prices (lest we forget the PS5 stock problems).

On the official Steam Deck pre-order page, you’ll see the following purchase options, at three different Steam Deck price points:

• £349 – 64GB and carrying case
• £459 – 256GB + SSD + carrying case + Steam Community profile bundle
• £569 – 512GB + SSD + anti-glare etched glass + carrying case + Steam Community profile bundle + Virtual Keyboard theme

There are a couple of things worth noting here. You must have a Steam account to pre-order a Steam Deck. Reserving a Steam Deck costs £4, with the final payment taken at a later date (more on that in a sec).

A special Steam Deck dock (serving a similar purpose to the Nintendo Switch dock) will be sold separately and released at a later date. Until that dock launches, you’ll have to connect the Steam Deck to your monitor using the USB-C port on the portable machine. For now, to connect your Steam Deck to a monitor or TV, you’ll have to use a USB-C docking station like this one on Amazon.

Steam Deck release date

The Steam Deck release date is 25th February 2022. From that date, Valve will start contacting people that have pre-ordered the machine with a view to taking their final payment and arranging the delivery.

As an official Steam Deck blog puts it: “On February 25th, we will be sending out the first batch of order emails to reservation holders. Customers will have 3 days (72 hours) from receipt of their order email to make their purchase, before their reservation is released to the next person in the queue. The first units will be on their way to customers starting the 28th, and we plan to release new order email batches on a weekly cadence.”

Preference will go to players that pre-ordered their Steam Deck earliest, then. If you were to order a Steam Deck today, the official Steam Deck website estimates that you could be waiting until ‘after Q2 2022’ to receive your machine.

That would mean that you might be waiting until July 2022 to actually receive a Steam Deck, especially if you didn’t order it last summer when pre-orders first began. We’ll bring you more information on that release timeline as we hear it.

Steam Deck verified games

Although most PC games will be playable on Steam Deck (albeit with the risk of tiny text), some games are being tweaked especially to suit the machine’s tiny form factor. These games will run particularly well on the system, and they’re collectively known as ‘Steam Deck verified games’.

Over on the SteamDB database, you can see the full list of Steam Deck verified games and games that have been certified as ‘playable’ or ‘unsupported’ on Steam Deck.

At the last count, there were 350 Steam Deck verified games, and a further 268 titles that will be playable on the Steam Deck. That makes 618 games that will run on the Steam Deck at launch, with plenty more expected to be added in the future. Watch this space, then!

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