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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney throws shade at Valve / Gabe Newell for Steam Deck pricing
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
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What could valve do? They can't sell them at a loss compared to component prices.
If they tried to target lower budget/spec for some steam machines that might help though. But really have we ever expected people to do much gaming on a £500 system? Sure it's always been possible but it's also always been pretty limited.
They were definitely selling at a huge loss with the original prices and depending on how hard their suppliers got hit, they might still be selling at a loss now. The game sales will make up for it.
No they weren't. There is literally 0 proof of that. Quit spreading misinformation
There is absolutely no way that 350€ was not a loss for them. The also basically said that indirectly. And if you include all the software dev work that goes into the platform it gets even more cost intensive for them.
https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/gabe-newell-says-steam-decks-aggressive-pricing-painful-but-critical-2995253
It never sold at 350€, it started at 350£/400€ at launch for the 64bg LCD. The price point being painful does not mean they sell at loss.
"Painful" could easily (and mostly likely) refer to extremely low profit margins that would take several years to pay off the development costs. And that quote specifically refers to the base 64GB version. The price difference between that and the 256GB version was way more than the increase in storage costs, despite that being the only difference.
Also, I absolutely knew you were going to reply with this quote despite it not being evidence. Congrats on being extremely predictable.
You don't have to buy games from them though, if it's at a loss people would start buying them for other uses too
They very much are...
Theres also a lot of hardware on them that is useless for server use, but still adds cost.
So its probably still cheaper just to buy a used server instead of an army of mid steam decks.
They very much do. There are countless tutorials on using it for other things than steam