You will have three days to pay for your portable PC, or else someone else will be allowed to purchase the Steam Deck.

The Steam Deck officially launches on February 25, but that doesn’t mean Gabe Newell will send it out to, say, a downtown console store. No, they’re going with a direct-to-consumer approach (something Sony is doing with PlayStation Direct, which should expand further into Europe this year), which demands attention from Valve and consumers alike! So the launch here means sending out the first emails, and the Steam Deck won’t be sent out until February 28.

Valve has confirmed the schedule, revealing that the first emails to pre-order customers will reach customers at 7 pm UK time on February 25, who have 72 hours to pay for their portable PC. If that doesn’t happen (whether you cancel the order, can’t pay, or get stuck somewhere in the process), the next in line will get the chance to pay for the Steam Deck within three days. At the same time, so tomorrow evening, more detailed press reviews will start to appear online (the embargo is until then, apparently), and Valve says there will be plenty of exciting content and coverage for everyone to enjoy…

Hollow joy at the announcement of the Steam Deck dock, though. “We are also looking forward to getting the official Dock for Steam Deck into customers’ hands. It won’t be happening as early as we wanted, but we’re excited to talk more about it soon and are planning to make them available in late spring,” Valve wrote. So around the end of May, and with the dock, the Steam Deck could rival the Nintendo Switch in this respect as well.

The Steam Deck has also had some serious problems with stock shortages, so ordering one now would mean waiting four months to buy the machine, so unless you were one of the first to get a pre-order in, you’d have to wait a bit…

Source: PCGamer