Epic Games' outspoken CEO Tim Sweeney has taken to X to criticize Valve over its recent price hike of the Steam Deck. Valve raised the prices ofits handheld this week, with the 1TB model now costing $949. Even though many consoles have seen their prices jump by $50 to $100 in recent months, this is still nothing compared to the extra $240 to $300 that Valve slapped on the Steam Deck. The increases have been driven by the memory and chip shortages stemming from the AI infrastructure build-out, but Sweeney wasted no time criticizing Valve on X for the much higher price increases it applied.
Everyone’s being too harsh here. There has been a significant rise in the cost of components that Steam customer spending ultimately funds, and economic trends have created severe disruptions in the component parts supply chain for megayachts. pic.twitter.com/w8iHVdSatKMay 28, 2026
While his post initially mentioned the significant rise in component costs, which everyone is suffering from, he eventually ended it with “severe disruptions in the component parts supply chain for megayachts” in an apparent potshot at Valve CEO Gabe Newell’s penchant for superyachts. While Newell's Valve is behind some of the most notable game franchises in history, including Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, and Counter-Strike, he also has a love for massive sea-going vessels. Luxury Launches reports that he owns six vessels, including the 365-foot (111-m) superyacht Leviathan that he took delivery of in 2025, totaling around a billion dollars in value (and not counting the millions he’s spending on maintenance, crews, and other costs). He uses the vessels privately, but also for marine research and ocean exploration.
Valve’s hardware is generally designed to compete against gaming PCs and does not face off with dedicated gaming consoles that have their hardware costs subsidized by sales of gaming titles. So, if we compare the 512GB Steam Deck’s $789 against the Lenovo Legion Go 2 and the Asus ROG Xbox Ally, you’d find that it’s still within the same price range.
As for the rumored Steam Machine, the company hasn’t announced the living room PC console’s price yet, but Valve said that it won’t subsidize it to make its price closer to the PlayStation or Xbox. Instead, it will be priced similarly to other gaming PC builds — and with memory and storage chip prices the way they are right now, it's possible the Steam Machine may be priced at or above $1,000. But, at the very least, you’d own the hardware you buy, and you can freely replace SteamOS with another operating system should you want to do so.
