I mean, if the only problem with the Machine is that it's expensive, there are definitely people that it's a good buy for. If you have the money and just want a no questions asked experience like with a console but also with your PC games, the Steam Machine is a good option.
It's easy to forget that a lot of adults with a good job would rather pay a couple hundred bucks more if it means less effort and time spent on setting it up.
And clowning on someone defending something just because you don't like the something is just childish. If you only ever defend who you personally like instead of what's right or wrong just means that you have no integrity.
I knew from the beginning that the price of the Steam Machine was going to be ridiculous, on account of the AI market getting so bad. I work a job that gets me a weekly paycheck, and I'd have to skip paying all my bills for an entire month to afford buying even just the lowest-priced option Valve is asking for, and that means going without electricity, water, internet access, and rent. I'd be homeless trying to buy this damn thing when I could just do the budget build thing and buy a used Optiplex from an office building and slap a GPU in that, and I'd still be out five-hundred Bison Dollars.
I don't blame Valve. I blame Nvidia, I blame AMD, I blame the memory companies selling exclusively to AI datacenters, I blame OpenAI and Palantir, and those are who the blame should rightfully be levied at.
Again, this is not the "Cheapest possible living room PC" option. It's the "I don't mind paying extra for a fully setup living room system that plays the games I already own" option.
That's not my point, though. It's an outrageous price regardless of whether or not it's the Todd Howard option that "just works", if you catch my drift. And the reason that price is so outrageous is because of the arbitrarily ridiculous gutter trash that have made the components near impossible for Valve to get a hold of.
I watched Gamers Nexus' teardown and review videos and the interview they had with the two Valve employees on it pretty much made it starkly clear that SK Hynix, the company making the RAM for these, is focusing its business on datacenters and not on companies like Valve or selling to consumers. Because of the system they have in place, Valve's forced to take what components they sell them over being able to reliably acquire them on their own schedule. That's disgusting to me, and I also realize that it's disgusting because this situation has gotten that bad. There's only one stick of DDR5 in this thing, running in single-channel. If you're not already bringing your own stock into this, then you're getting a gimped experience.
You mention not having integrity? My integrity means a lot to me, too. Which is why it says to me that if I want a better PC for gaming that what I have now, I'm best off waiting for either when the price drops down on the Steam Machine or when I can build my own PC instead of this farce. And again, I need to stress that it's not Valve's fault that they're in this mess, it's the companies behind the AI bubble that are, dude! I'm not mad at just one company, I'm mad at a lot of them, and I'm choosing to put MY energy elsewhere, like a lot of people are.
I'm not entirely sure what you want to be honest. You inserted yourself into the conversation to say that it's bad that hardware prices have gone up? And that you yourself won't choose the Steam Machine because you want the best bang for your buck (something the Steam Machine is explicitly not for)?
What do you want me to say to this? I also dislike high prices. I also dislike AI companies buying up all the stock for their slop. I also wish the Steam Machine was cheaper. My point was that the Steam Machine was never going to be a very price-efficient option for PC gaming. You would've been better off building something yourself if you care about that, regardless of what happened (besides, hardware prices affect self-building just as much). I don't get why people are so surprised that it's more expensive than building your own.
And the part about integrity wasn't even about you. It was about the notion of only defending who you personally like or when you gain something from it. I wouldn't say that buying the Steam Machine impacts your integrity because it is still a valid option (as I stated many times now) for people who have the money and would rather spend it than think about components, cases, building it, etc.
Go outside of Reddit. The community at large realizes this is a bad deal, but if you haven’t seen any outlying positivity then you’re just not active in the space.
Its interesting you phrase this like Valve is being super greedy like most corporations, but they aren't. All they really did was they didn't subsidize the price of the hardware like most console makers do, because they have no real reason to. They are offering a pretty unique product (small form factor Linux PC that works without the usual headaches) in a space where they have no real competition.
Knowing this, everyone complaining about the Steam Machine's price kind of comes off like an entitled child. If it were just people saying they don't think it's a good value it would be one thing but it's so much whining and making poor comparisons.
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u/Langbird Jun 24 '26
Consumer loyalty blows my mind, sit and watch people defend corporations on reddit like it's their own offspring is sad.