Tim Sweeney takes swipes at Valve for Steam Deck price hike, blames it on the ‘component parts supply chain for megayachts’

The once budget handheld gaming PC, the Steam Deck, recently received an astronomical price hike, with Valve citing “global logistical challenges” (otherwise known as the global memory crisis) for this decision. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney soon weighed in on the matter, drawing attention to Gabe Newell’s $500 million superyacht in the process.

Commenting on X, Tim Sweeney says, “Everyone’s being too harsh here. There has been a significant rise in the cost of components that Steam customer spending ultimately funds, and economic trends have created severe disruptions in the component parts supply chain for megayachts.”

For the unaware, the Leviathan is a 111-meter superyacht built for Gabe Newell with an on-board hospital, submarine garage, and 15 gaming PCs. It’s the 50th-largest yacht in the world right now. It also comes with two gyms, a 250 square meter beach club with a spa and bar, and diving platforms. It’s luxurious is the point I am trying to make.

It does sort of seem like Sweeney is just taking swings for the sake of taking swings here, because, although Gabe Newell does own a superyacht (that was likely super expensive), it’s hard to believe the Steam Deck price hikes will exactly cover that cost.

The price of memory is sharply surging upwards, and Valve is just one of many companies that have raised prices to accommodate it. Without knowing the specific price of the hardware, it’s hard to say if Valve is making a bigger profit or not from the rise than it was pre-memory crisis.

The comments on Sweeney’s post are not very happy with it. The top one, as of the time of writing, says, “Hey Tim when was the last time Valve laid off their employees? Oh yeah never?”

It seems like the last public round of layoffs made at Valve was back in 2019, where 13 were let go. And tens of staff were let go six years prior, in 2013. Epic Games, on the other hand, let go of 1,000 employees just two months ago, with one employee saying, “We only had a slight hint that the company revenue wasn’t doing well.”

Despite prices of Steam Deck models rising by almost 50%, it still somehow sold out in North America less than 24 hours after the hike. If the Steam Deck can be successful way above its original price, it does make me a little worried that I’ll need a superyacht to afford a Steam Machine for my living room, even if it may not be Valve’s fault.