Valve’s handheld gaming device returned to store shelves last week. Buyers didn’t hesitate. Less than 24 hours after the company posted new, sharply higher prices, the Steam Deck OLED vanished from availability in North America. Demand held firm. Even at hundreds of dollars more. The numbers tell a stark story. The 512GB OLED model jumped from $549 to $789. That’s a $240 increase, or 44 percent. The 1TB version rose from $649 to $949, a $300 hike that works out to 46 percent. No hardware upgrades accompanied the change. Valve pointed directly to supply pressures. “Steam Deck itself hasn’t changed; these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole,” the company stated in its announcement, as reported by Ars Technica . But that was fast. The device had sat largely out of stock since mid-February, caught in a memory and storage crunch that began gathering force in fall 2025. AI demand drove much of the squeeze.…