Like many products, Valve’s Steam Deck gaming handheld took many iterations to become the product that you see today, and before that, many prototypes was produced in the development process. One of them has seemingly slipped through the cracks and ended up on eBay, and it was sold for a whopping $3,000 price tag.
Steam Deck Prototype Surfaced
This particular prototype is the “Engineering Sample 34” according to images shown in the listing (no longer exist as it has been sold, but Reddit users recorded it), which looks quite different than the retail model you see today. While the general layout of the buttons are similar to the production unit, one of the biggest distinctions is the touchpad – here, it’s two circular shaped touchpads with significant protrusions.
The back of this prototype, meanwhile, looks vastly different. Unlike the production model, the handles have a more distinct curve, with the lower edge particularly pointy; the intake vent is also located on a different spot, on the top half of the device in this case (as opposed to lower half). There’s also spots of blue accents around the device, whereas the production unit opted for a simpler color scheme.
Conveniently, Valve previously published a booklet detailing the making of Steam Deck, and among the vast amount of images in the page 12 of the PDF showing every prototype designed up until the final product, there is one that happens to look identical to the very unit appeared on the listing. (It’s also likely the last prototype before Valve’s engineers adopted the square trackpad design, as seen in the image above.)
On that note, like most prototype and pre-production devices, it’s probably not supposed to be sold, especially given the glaring “not for resale” label behind the device – it might even attract the lawyers from Valve to track down the seller and the device itself, now potentially on the loose.
Pokdepinion: The sale was definitely a bit questionable.
