The might of Steam’s servers buckle under consumer demand.
I think it’s safe to say at this point that society will never have a smooth launch of a relatively in-demand hardware product ever again. Valve went live at 1p.m. ET today with the mere launch of reservations for the Steam Deck and unsurprisingly it went down like a glass of turpentine and bent nails.
The massive onslaught of users attempting to put a simple five dollars down on the device knocked the store offline several times, and the servers are still going pretty slowly. Many users began seeing lockout messages that their accounts were unable to make purchases due to them slamming the “order now” button hoping it would eventually work, while others were erroneously told that their accounts were too young to make a reservation.
Valve made the decision to lock out accounts that hadn’t made purchases, as well as accounts created as of June 2021, at least for the first 48 hours of reservations. Which means gamers who didn’t qualify for this round get to go up against all the bot scalpers who show up on Sunday. Fun times.
The $649 version is either the most popular or the least in supply, since as of 2:40p.m. ET today it is showing a Q2 2022 estimated shipping date while the cheaper versions are still showing a Q1 2022 date. This date may be region-oriented. On the plus side, just think of how many Steam stickers and animated avatars you’ll be able to buy with the points earned from that purchase.
Good news to come out of all of this is that Valve isn’t going with a set stock, but rather estimated shipping dates. At least this way you can get an order in knowing that you’ll eventually get your order, which is far more user friendly than attempting to buy a PlayStation 5. If luck has it, Valve will be able to produce these quickly enough to offset some of the worse of scalping.
MMO Fallout 