Valve says the RAM crisis pushed Steam Frame above the price it was aiming for

Valve says Steam Frame was meant to be cheaper, and that the global memory shortage is why it is not. Speaking to PC Gamer, the BBC and Tom's Hardware around the September 14 launch, three Valve staff said rising component costs pushed the headset above the price the company had been aiming for.

Steam Frame carries 16GB of LPDDR5X memory in both its 256GB and 1TB versions. Image: Valve

The price they ended up with is steep. Valve's launch post lists the 256GB model at $1,059 in the US, €1,049 in the EU and £889 in the UK, and the 1TB model at $1,299, €1,279 and £1,089, all including VAT where it applies. Those figures end months of guessing that ran right up to the backend changes that pointed to reservations in early September.

Valve blames the RAM crisis for the price

Hardware engineer Joy Lyons told PC Gamer that Valve "set out to design this hardware with one particular price in mind", and that "that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world." Software engineer Jeremy Selan was more wistful: "I wish we could have shipped it at the price that we were at last year."

Selan gave the BBC a similar account. "We set out to come out with a device that would have been much more affordable," he said, "but the global Ram market has impacted us the same way it's impacted everybody." According to the BBC, he also said Valve "fought hard to get it even to this price".

None of the interviews includes the price Valve originally had in mind. PC Gamer confirms only that Valve aimed lower, and Lyons would not guess at what comes next: "We don't know what pricing is in the future."

Copper and shipping add to the bill

Pierre-Loup Griffais, a Valve software developer, told Tom's Hardware that memory is only part of the problem. "Even just things like motherboards, copper, anything; even shipping anything worldwide right now is way more expensive than it was last year and two years ago," he said. "So every part of the sticker price is affected there."

He also admitted that Valve has no special protection from the market. "As far as memory prices and those kinds of conditions, we're really in it like everyone else," Griffais said, adding that "the fact that our price was affected by that compared to what we were hoping for is definitely true."

The memory in question is not a small line item. Valve's spec sheet lists 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, the same mobile memory type that analysts at TrendForce forecast in February would rise about 90% in contract price quarter on quarter in the first three months of 2026, "the steepest increases in their history."

Valve did consider the obvious saving. Asked by PC Gamer about shipping less memory, Selan said Valve wanted access to "this huge fraction of the same catalog" as Steam Deck, and that a lower spec would "slice a major component off it and make sure that'll never run".

Steam Frame now costs more than the Valve Index did

For long-time PC VR players, the useful comparison is Valve's own previous headset. The Valve Index full kit, with headset, controllers and two base stations, launched at $999 in 2019, so the cheapest Steam Frame costs $60 more before accessories.

It also costs more than Valve's $1,049 Steam Machine, which PC Gamer calls the biggest victim of the memory crisis.

The launch price is not fixed either. Valve's Limited Drop Program terms, which govern the purchase emails going out from September 18, state plainly that "Prices are subject to change." Valve has given no sign in which direction.