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Steam Deck reservations were a disaster

By Eric Abent/

Steam Deck reservations opened at the top of the hour, and if you were expecting Steam to buckle under the rush of people looking to reserve one, your expectations were right on the money. Unfortunately, many of those looking to reserve a Steam Deck were greeted by a number of issues, whether they saw the same error messages over and over again, fell victim to a laggy checkout process, or even had their accounts locked for trying to make too many purchases in too short a window of time.

In other words, the launch of Steam Deck reservations went about as well as every other gaming hardware pre-order launch in recent memory. It seems that these pre-order kick-offs always collapse thanks to huge swathes of people looking to reserve or order a unit, and you don't have to look very hard on social media to find stories of people trying to reserve a Steam Deck only to walk away frustrated and defeated.

YouTuber Michael Fisher, perhaps better known as MrMobile, shared the tweet you see above full of screenshots of various error messages. Several people have shared screenshots of their own error messages in the replies to that tweet, whether those came during the payment process or as Steam went down entirely. Rick and Morty co-creator and voice actor Justin Roiland had his own troubles attempting to pick up a Steam Deck, sharing an error message that reads, "It looks like you've been attempting a lot of purchases in the last few hours. Please wait a while before trying again."

The Verge's Sean Hollister, on the other hand, encountered an error message that said his Steam account was too new to reserve a Steam Deck at the moment. Steam is restricting new accounts from reserving Steam Decks until Sunday, July 18th, so some are undoubtedly seeing that message pop up today. The problem is that Hollister says he's had his Steam account since Half-Life 2 came out, so his account is among the oldest Steam accounts in existence and not new by any definition of the phrase.

So, if you've been trying to order a Steam Deck only to be greeted by errors and timeouts, it seems you're in good company. Were you successful in reserving a Steam Deck? Head down to the comments section and let us know!

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