this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026 (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 day ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
136 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Valve’s Steam Machine finally has a price: a whopping $1,049 for the 512GB configuration or $1,349 for the 2TB version. And those are without bundled controllers, which drive up the cost more.

The prices are so high in part because Valve isn’t subsidizing the hardware, and the company has already indicated that the component crisis forced it to reconsider its initial pricing plans. In an interview with the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, Valve engineers discussed the reality of sourcing RAM in 2026, with take-it-or-leave-it prices as memory and other components remain in short supply, from only a few vendors like Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix.

[...]

Valve, of course, isn’t the only company in a bind over memory shortages, as the crunch is forcing many hardware makers to make significant pricing changes. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook is warning of incoming price hikes for iPhones, Macs, and other devices. And the RAM crunch isn’t projected to get better anytime soon.

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[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah, the cartel comment implies price fixing or a monopoly or something, which really isn't the case. This is really clearly a case of demand going through the roof (for entirely stupid and irresponsible reasons) and supply not being able to meet it.

But that's what I get for using critical thinking amongst a mob, this is on me.

[–] nuko147@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

Demand going the roof would be normal.

One company (openAI) to prepurchase all of the next years ram before even produced and you double the prices only from that is a cartel move.

And maybe is the worst to this date, with prices 4x or 5x, but in the past the cartel had other ways to raise prices 2x (2016 was last time for who remember).

[–] AliasVortex@lemmy.world 11 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

It can be both. The three RAM manufactures (Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix) have a historical record of price fixing and collusion (I believe Gamers Nexus has some excellent reporting on this). It isn't just supply and demand, it's that three sketchy companies have the world over a barrel and may well be using the demand spike to keep prices (artificially) high with the knowledge that nobody else can enter the market and that it takes YEARS and a truly ridiculous amount of money to scale up production to increase supply.