Last updated Friday, July 16, 3:44 p.m. PDT.

Apparently the public wants Steam Decks; shortly after Valve's new handheld console went up for pre-order, parts of the Steam store stopped working: mainly, the part where you can pre-order Steam Decks.

We all initially saw the "something went wrong" screen above, but as of 10:20 a.m. PDT, two people in the U.S. had successfully placed reservations; others on the PC Gamer team encountered the following message:

Despite the server problems, it appears that plenty of Steam Deck reservations have been made.

The first pre-ordered Steam Deck will begin shipping this December, but for those who pre-ordered now, the estimated ship date has been changed to Q3 2022 for the 512GB version and Q1 or Q2 2022 for the other versions. (This may vary by region.)

It is unknown how many reservations were made and how many Steam Deck units were allocated to each shipping quota and region.

Bots run by eBay resellers are notorious for taking consoles and graphics cards as soon as they go on sale, but that is probably not the cause of this server problem. To combat resellers, Valve is limiting $5 pre-orders to those who had Steam accounts before June. This restriction will be lifted on Sunday. However, some people are getting the "your account is too new" error even if their account is not new.

Perhaps these errors are just Steam being Steam: also, I struggle with every new Steam sale.

Nevertheless, Steam Deck pre-orders are fetching ridiculous prices on eBay, and some are selling. Perhaps the buyers are in regions where Steam Deck is not yet available for pre-order, such as South Korea or Australia.

If you are able to pre-order the Steam Deck, you will be notified in the future when it will be available to order. You will need to order the same model that you pre-ordered. The more expensive version has faster storage, and a MicroSD card can be used to add (non-fast) storage capacity to all three models; more information on Steam Deck specs can be found here.

The Steam Deck will begin shipping to addresses in the United States, Canada, European Union, and the United Kingdom this December, but this appears to be limited to those who were able to pre-order early. Availability in other regions will follow.