Valve unveiled its new handheld gaming console—the Steam Deck—this week. Interest in it is so high that when it went up for pre-order earlier today, Valve’s servers were instantly overloaded. Users were served up a frustrating slew of errors throughout the checkout process.
Errors ranged from the generic and largely unhelpful “Something Went Wrong” to this enraging message that popped up for anyone that kept trying to hit Purchase when it didn’t go through: “It looks like you’ve been attempting a lot of purchases in the last few hours. Please wait a while before trying again.”
Some people weren’t even able to get that far and saw a “Reservation Servers are busy, please try again” error on the product’s website. The reservation system was also locking out users with unused or brand-new accounts, possibly as an attempt to get the consoles into the hands of actual customers rather than scalpers. But still, with over 120 million monthly users in 2020, that’s a lot of competition to go up against.
Naturally, folks took to Twitter to collectively lament their lack of luck (or for the lucky few, to gloat) as well as to share other weird errors that prevented them from logging in and, as you’d expect, to share ridiculous memes.
The Steam Deck is available in three storage capacities—64GB, 256GB, and 512GB—and pricing starts at $399, though you only need to plop down a fiver today to secure yours. If you do manage to secure a reservation, keep in mind that the console won’t begin shipping until December, just in time for the holidays.
If you’re trying to reserve one but are seeing errors, the key is to be patient. There is a ton of demand for the Steam Deck—especially after Nintendo’s lackluster Switch OLED reveal—and it seems like Valve is making some efforts to minimize scalping (though, not shockingly, there are already reports of it such on eBay even though nobody has a physical device yet—BEWARE!). Don’t refresh the order page, keep checking your inbox for an order confirmation email, and stick with it—orders are slowly but surely going through!
Steam Deck Reservations Up Now
Valve Steam Deck
Love gaming? Got five bucks? Reserve your Steam Deck console now on Valve’s site.