Valve will finally bring the Steam Deck to Australia as it continues to expand the availability of its popular handheld gaming PC.
The company announced that both the LCD and the OLED versions of the Steam Deck will be available to purchase in Australia starting this November. “We are excited to announce that Steam Deck is coming to Australia in November 2024,” it confirmed. There will be no pre-orders available, and Valve said the device would ship “immediately” once it is launched.
The original Steam Deck with an LCD and 256GB of onboard storage will cost AUD $649. The OLED version will come in 512GB and 1TB capacities, priced at AUD $899 and AUD $1,049, respectively. These are the same models Valve sells in other markets. It’s worth upgrading to the Steam Deck OLED if you care about perks like much better display quality, a longer battery life, a faster chip, and a 90 Hz refresh rate. On the downside, those improvements will set you back an extra AUD $250 over the Steam Deck LCD.
You can even install Windows 11 on your Steam Deck OLED using a bootable microSD card, making it easy to switch back to SteamOS. And with the SteamOS Beta, you can get upcoming features like better power management and OLED optimizations before others do.
The original Steam Deck debuted in February 2022 in the United States, with the OLED version unveiled in November 2023. It expanded to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong just six months later. So why the two-and-a-half-year wait before bringing the gaming handheld Down Under? Valve wouldn’t say, but perhaps its prior legal spat with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) has something to do with it.
Back in 2014, the ACCCD accused Valve of breaching Australian consumer laws due to its inadequate refund policy. The main point of contention was Valve’s refusal to refund Steam downloads to Australians at all, in any circumstances. Valvo also failed to inform games of their rights when purchasing titles from the Steam website or Steam Client. Australian courts sided with the ACCC, finding Valve guilty of those wrongdoings and fining the company AUD $3 million for misleading consumers. Higher courts eventually dismissed all appeals by Valve, and the company ended up paying the fine.
Source: Valve
