Reservations for the newly announced Steam Deck from Valve were in very high demand today. Mere seconds after reservations opened on Steam, the Store became unresponsive for a huge number of potential consumers. The screen most users came across was a "something went wrong" error page.
Still others encountered pages that said there was an error initializing or updating their transaction. Others were informed that their account was too new to reserve a copy. Still others were met with an error saying that they attempted too many purchases over the past few hours and that they should wait before trying again. While Valve did implement a restriction on new Steam accounts trying to purchase the device, many of those encountering that "account too new" error have had Steam accounts for well beyond the 48-hour waiting period that Valve put in place.
Those who managed to get an order in successfully are some of the lucky ones. The earlier reservations are expected to begin shipping at some point this December. If you got an order in later, it looks as though your device won't be fulfilled until Q1 2022 at the earliest, with the higher end models already being pushed to Q2 2022. Keep in mind that these dates could shift even further into 2022 as more and more people put their reservations in through the day.
If you don't want to wait, you can always peep these mental eBay listings for the Steam Deck that have already gone up. Scalpers are already placing some stupidly lofty prices, with some having a listing for over $5,000 (USD). Though that's on the extreme end of the eBay prices, they are all listed for well above Valve's MSRP.
It should probably go without saying, but don't purchase from scalpers. You may have to wait a few extra months, but buying directly from Valve is the way to go.
