Steam Deck can now be purchased without a reservation

After a year of lengthy, but steadily diminishing, queues to purchase a Steam Deck, Valve has announced its impressive handheld gaming PC is now available without a reservation.

Since last July, Valve has been using a reservation system for Steam Deck orders that first required purchasers to pay a small, deductible sum to join the reservations queue then wait for an invite to make a final purchase. For some time, the wait between the two steps was upward of several months, but the gap has been steadily narrowing as Steam Deck production began to outperform Valve’s estimates.

Now, some 15 months after reservations for Steam Deck initially opened, Valve has announced the queue has been eradicated. Anyone looking to acquire a Steam Deck can now do so immediately, without needing to wait for an invitation to purchase.

According to Steam, all three versions of the device – the £349 64GB model, the £459 256GB model, and the £569 512GB model – are available to purchase immediately in the UK with an estimated delivery time of 1-2 weeks. However, given that allocations have been per territory in the past, availability may differ from region to region.

Alongside today’s reservations news, Valve has announced its long-awaited official Steam Deck dock is also now available for purchase, with a price tag of £79.99/$89.99 USD.

For those unfamiliar, Steam Deck’s Docking Station, is, much like the dock for Nintendo’s Switch, a wired cradle that can be either used as a neater way to charge the device or as a means to connect it to a television for big-screen play.

To that end, the Docking Station – which measures 117mm x 29mm x 50.5mm and comes with a moulded rubber seat for safely resting the Steam Deck on – includes one DisplayPort 1.4 port, an HDMI 2.0 port, plus three USB-A 3.1 ports. It also features a gigabit ethernet port and is shipped with the same 1.5m PSU bundled with the Steam Deck itself.

Valve says it has done extensive testing and confirmed compatibility with a wide range of displays and peripherals, but notes it’s currently aware of a bug on LG displays causing visual noise when the Steam Deck’s wake/sleep function is used with an HDMI connection. A fix is currently in the works, however, and will be provided via a software update as soon as possible. Valve also says it will continue updating the device with “ongoing support and improvements”.

Like Steam Deck, the Docking Station currently has an estimated delivery time of 1-2 weeks.