Steam Frame Is Sold by Lottery, and the Spot Lasts 72 Hours

You cannot simply buy a Steam Frame. Valve sells it through a sign-up list that it shuffles once, at 10am Pacific on 17 September; after that, new sign-ups join the back of the waitlist. If your name comes up, the purchase email gives you 72 hours.

Valve’s page lists no price. Tom’s Hardware and VideoCardz both reported $1,059 for 256GB and $1,299 for 1TB on 14 September.

Who can sign up

Valve’s FAQ sets three conditions:

• a Steam account in good standing
• a purchase on Steam before 27 April 2026, which rules out an account made for the occasion
• one sign-up per household, which Valve says it checks against payment method and shipping address

You choose the 256GB or 1TB model when you sign up. After the shuffle you cannot switch, and cancelling releases your place rather than moving it.

Lists are separate for North America, the UK and EU, and Australia, so a reservation in one region says nothing about the queue in another. Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong order through Valve’s distributor Komodo, and South Korea is listed as later.

What happens after 17 September

Step	What Valve says
The shuffle	Each model’s list is randomised once, 17 September, 10am Pacific
Your email	You are told whether you hold a reservation or a waitlist place
From 18 September	Purchase emails go out in shuffled order
The window	72 hours to buy, then the spot passes to the next person
The waitlist	Moves up only when reservations lapse, then gets future production runs in order

Valve also says a waitlist place never jumps a reservation in the same list. If someone reports buying before you, Valve’s explanation is that they are probably in a different region.

Valve’s other new console is also sold through a waitlist: the Steam Machine is a waitlist, not a checkout.

Budget for the add-ons now

Valve says its own power supply and accessory kits “will only be available to customers purchasing their Steam Frame as part of the add-to-cart process”. So if you want them, they have to be in the basket inside that 72-hour window. VideoCardz reports that the headset does not come with a charger, and that Valve’s 45W supply is $29. Valve’s spec sheet says it charges over USB-C at up to 45W.

The headset, on paper

From Valve’s spec sheet:

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 16GB of RAM, 256GB or 1TB plus a microSD slot
• 2160 × 2160 LCD per eye, 72–144Hz, with 144Hz marked experimental
• Eye tracking used for what Valve calls foveated streaming, which it says typically gives “over a 10x improvement in image quality and effective bandwidth”
• A 6GHz wireless adapter in the box for streaming from a PC
• Controllers on one AA battery each, which Valve puts at about 40 hours

Valve describes the Frame as able to play some games standalone and stream the rest from a PC. Valve publishes a list of Steam Frame Standalone Verified games, and it is worth checking before assuming a game runs on the headset alone. The name follows Valve’s Deck programme, whose badges we unpicked in what the Steam Deck badges actually promise.