The Steam Deck is and continues to be a top-selling product on the Steam sales charts, but unless you pre-purchased within the first hours of its availability, you’re likely to still be waiting on an email saying you can order one. If you’re still on the fence or choose to pre-order today, you’ll be waiting until at least October at the earliest.
If you were an early adopter but are still waiting, a community tool can give an increasingly accurate picture of when your place in line comes up. The Steam Deck Order Calculator is a web app that uses a growing set of Steam Deck order data to estimate the exact date when you’ll receive your order email from Valve.
Filling out the calculator is simple. You’ll need to provide the email associated with your account, what region you ordered the Steam Deck for, the model (based on its GB of storage), and the current estimated order availability listed on the Steam Deck product page when you’re logged into Steam.
You then need to look up a value called “rtReserveTime,” which you can view via a link on the calculator page. It opens the Steam client directly, though when you open Steam, you’ll probably see a completely black page. Don’t worry, it’s not actually blank: press “CTRL+A” to highlight the text, find the rtReserveTime value, and plug it into the calculator.
Next, export a .csv copy of a spreadsheet listing actual Steam Deck order email values. Attach the file to the calculator and click on the “moo (v2 model)” option and wait a few seconds. The “Estimated Order Date” field at the bottom of the page will populate, showing you how much longer you can expect to wait for your email from Valve.
The calculator updates its estimates regularly, and as Valve continues to produce more Steam Deck units and ship them to customers, you might find your order date estimate move up a week or two.
Remember that once you receive your Steam Deck order email, you have 72 hours to complete the purchase. If you miss the email or let the time expire, you’ll lose your place in line and will join the other customers waiting until after October. Check the Steam Deck Order Calculator every week or so and make sure your inbox is clean so you get your Deck the moment it’s available.
