Valve Asks $1,059 and a Lottery for Steam Frame

Valve priced the Steam Frame at $1,059 for 256GB and told buyers a three-day signup window would close on September 17, 2026. The 1TB kit is $1,299. First purchase emails were due on September 18, each with 72 hours to check out.

That is Valve’s first headset since the 2019 Index, sold like Steam Machine: a shuffled list, not a midnight cart rush. The wager is that a Steam library and a PC dongle can carry a sticker that sits above the Index.

Purchase Emails Follow a Three-Day Signup Window

Signups opened September 14 on Steam for the 256GB or 1TB kit. Valve closed the lists on September 17 at 10 a.m. Pacific, then ran a one-time randomization of every signup so the first minute of the window bought no extra odds.

A reservation email means the chosen model is held in your name. A waitlist email means your place sits past the units Valve has set aside for now. The purchase mail is a separate message, sent as units are ready to ship, and missing that 72 hours window moves the slot to the next person in that region’s queue.

THE SIGNUP CLOCK

1. September 14, 2026: Valve posts prices and opens signups in the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, and Australia, with KOMODO handling Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
2. September 17, 2026, 10 a.m. Pacific: Signups close and each model list is shuffled once.
3. September 17, 2026: Valve emails a reservation-queue or waitlist result to the address on the Steam account.
4. September 18, 2026: The first purchase emails go out in shuffle order, with 72 hours to pay.

Late signups join the back of the waitlist. Valve’s terms limit the offer to one product per household and ask for an unlimited Steam account in good standing that made a purchase before April 27, 2026. Payment methods and shipping addresses are the tools named for catching duplicates. Lists run per model and per shipping region, which is why a waitlisted buyer in another market can see a purchase mail first.

The $1,059 Kit Costs More Than the Index

When Valve showed Steam Frame in November 2025, it said it wanted to come in under the $999 Index kit. Hardware engineer Joy Lyons later said that target moved.

Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world.

Joy Lyons, hardware engineer, Valve

Lyons also said everyone is disappointed by the RAM crisis. Software engineer Jeremy Selan put it plainer: the team had been targeting a lower price and wished it could have shipped at last year’s figure. The 256GB Frame lands $60 above the old Index kit and $10 above Steam Machine at $1,049, the living-room PC Valve priced after blaming memory contracts.

PRICE AGAINST THE INDEX AND QUEST 3

UK pricing is £889 for 256GB and £1,089 for 1TB, VAT in. Euro prices are €1,049 and €1,279. Canada is $1,529 and $1,859; Australia $1,609 and $1,969. The Frame still asks $460 more than a 512GB Quest 3 in the US, with half the onboard storage and a microSD slot to make up the gap. Review units that ran Half-Life: Alyx locally lasted 63 minutes on the headset and 114 minutes while streaming from a PC in Playtime mode, which is the pattern Valve is selling: the visor is a thin client first.

What Ships in the Box, and What Does Not

Both kits include the headset, two Steam Frame controllers, the plug-in 6GHz wireless adapter, and Half-Life: Alyx. Alyx redeems in the headset settings, one copy per device, and accounts that already own the game do not get a second code. The power supply is not in the carton. Valve’s own page says a Steam Deck charger or any 45W USB-C brick will run it, and sells a 45W unit with a 2.5m cable for $29 if you do not already have one.

IN THE BOX VERSUS SOLD SEPARATE

• In the kit: Headset with a rear 21.6 Wh battery, two controllers, Wi-Fi 6E adapter, and Half-Life: Alyx.
• Power supply: 45W USB-C brick at $29, £29, or €39, offered only at checkout after a purchase email.
• Ergonomic kit: $59 for two controller hand straps with battery doors, a top strap, and an extended light blocker.
• Replacement kit: $49 for a face gasket, head cushion, and standard light blocker.

Those add-ons cannot be bought on their own from the product page. They appear as checkout extras once Valve has sent a purchase mail. Controllers take one AA cell each and Valve rates them at about 40 hours. Grip straps, the part that makes long sessions less slippery, sit in the $59 bundle rather than in the box.

Streaming Gets the Dongle, the Radios, and the Eye Cameras

Valve calls Steam Frame a streaming-first wireless VR headset that can take a full Steam library, then adds that it also supports stand-alone play. The visor runs SteamOS 3 on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with 16GB of unified LPDDR5X, 256GB or 1TB of UFS storage, and a microSD slot. Valve says more than 100 titles are already Steam Frame Standalone Verified, a list that will grow, and treats the headset as a PC you can suspend, resume, and load your own software onto.

The streaming stack is the expensive idea. A USB Wi-Fi 6E adapter builds a dedicated 6GHz link to the PC. Dual Wi-Fi 7 radios split the work, one carrying the game and the other staying on home Wi-Fi, so the two jobs do not fight for the same airtime. Inside the visor, two eye cameras feed Foveated Streaming, which Valve says typically offers over a 10x gain in image quality and effective bandwidth by putting the sharp pixels where you look. Multi-Link Streaming can spread that traffic across every live connection at once.

Panels are 2160 x 2160 LCD per eye behind pancake lenses, 72 to 144Hz, with 144Hz marked experimental. Four outward monochrome cameras track the headset and controllers, with IR lamps for dark rooms. Passthrough from those cameras is grey. There is no color mixed-reality view until you add hardware. Weight is the comfort argument: 185g for the front module and about 440g with the strap and rear battery, 75g under a Quest 3 at 515g, with mass shifted off the face.

Zenni and Arcturus Sell What the Headset Omits

Color vision is a partner product. Arcturus Vision’s certified 5K HDR color passthrough camera clips to the front expansion port, weighs under 10g, and uses two 32-megapixel Sony RGB sensors. The US price is $149. It records stereo 5K at up to 60 fps or 2.5K at up to 120 fps, and Arcturus says launch orders will be held for several days so buyers can line them up with Frame purchase mails. The same port is the opening Valve left for later modules; the camera is the first thing through it.

Glasses wearers get another bill. Zenni Optical, named on the Steam page as a Steam Frame Compatible maker, is selling snap-in prescription inserts at $67.95, ground in Ohio as 1.67 high-index single-vision lenses with an oil-resistant coat. No pupillary-distance reading is required. The inserts were listed as notify-me around launch, so some buyers will have a visor in hand before the lenses ship.

A later “enthusiast” pack with extra battery and premium audio was discussed around launch and did not appear on Valve’s first-party accessory list. Until that kit is for sale, the path to longer sessions is the $59 strap bundle, a spare 45W brick, and whatever USB-C pack you already own.

One in Three Community Reports Landed a Reservation

Valve has not published how many Frame units sit in the first allocation, or the odds on either model. SteamHardware.io, a fan-run tracker, is collecting anonymous self-selected results. Those figures are not Valve’s queue and they are not a ship date.

COMMUNITY RESERVATION REPORTS

• All reports: 2,316 of 6,957 community reports (33.3%) said they reached reservation.
• 256GB kit: 1,296 of 3,800 reports (34.1%) on the cheaper model reached reservation, and that kit is 54.6% of all Frame reports.
• 1TB kit: 1,020 of 3,157 reports (32.3%) reached reservation.
• Still pending: 1,786 reports still showed a lottery result waiting, so the 33.3% share is a floor that will move as inboxes catch up.

A long Steam history did not appear to help. The shuffle treated a 22-year account with a four-figure library the same as any other eligible login, which is the point of a random draw and the insult if you have spent years on the store. Result mail did not land evenly on September 17 either; some buyers were still staring at an empty inbox into the next evening while others posted reservation screenshots. Listings showed up on resale sites as waitlist mail went out, which is the reseller problem Valve said the Steam Machine-style queue was built to limit. People who forfeit a 72-hour purchase slot recycle that unit down the same regional line. Valve has not said it will run a second raffle.

Waitlisted Buyers Sit Behind an Unpublished Allocation

South Korea is still listed as coming soon through KOMODO. Everyone else who missed the September 17 cutoff is already at the back of the waitlist. Fan accounts have tossed around 2027 as a wait-list horizon; that is not a Valve date. The company has only said it will notify waitlisted buyers if they move into the reservation queue, and that more purchase mails will follow as units are ready to ship.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The sticker: $1,059 for 256GB and $1,299 for 1TB, with Alyx in the box and the PSU sold separate.
• The rules: One household, one model, a purchase on the account before April 27, 2026, then a shuffle, then 72 hours to pay.
• The design: Streaming-first visor, stand-alone as a second mode, grey passthrough unless you buy the Arcturus camera.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Launch volume: Valve has not said how many headsets the first reservation pool covers.
• Waitlist length: No public date for when waitlisted buyers in each region get a reservation.
• Enthusiast kit: Extra battery and premium audio were described around launch and are not on the current accessory sheet.

A reservation is a name on a unit, not a delivery day. The people who cleared the shuffle still have to spend $1,059, or $1,299, inside 72 hours, on a visor that needs a charger you may already own and a color camera you may not. That is the bet Valve placed, and the only one the first wave of mail actually settles.