Steam Machine invites just dropped. You have 72 hours to not screw this up.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Valve has begun sending first-wave Steam Machine reservation invites to randomly selected buyers who made a Steam purchase before April 27, 2026, giving each recipient exactly 72 hours to complete their order before the slot moves to the next person in line.

If you signed up before June 25, check your inbox-and your spam folder. Valve randomized the first-wave queue on June 25 and started sending purchase emails during the week of June 29, with separate lists for North America, the UK, the EU, and Australia. Getting picked does not mean you have a Steam Machine; it means you have a three-day window to convert that reservation into an actual order. Miss it, and your spot rolls to the next person automatically.

The eligibility gate is deliberately strict: your Steam account needed at least one purchase-anything from a game to DLC-before April 27, 2026. The idea was to stop scalpers from spinning up fresh accounts to game the system. It did not entirely work. Reservation confirmations are already appearing on resale marketplaces at inflated markups, though whether those sellers can actually complete checkout within Valve’s 72-hour limit is another question.

Pricing starts at $1,049 for the 512GB entry model and climbs to $1,428 for a 2TB bundle that includes a Steam Controller and extra faceplates. Under the hood, Valve is packing an AMD Zen 4 six-core chip, RDNA 3 graphics, 16GB of DDR5, and SteamOS 3. Several configurations and regions are already showing constrained availability, so if you get the email, do not wait.

What to watch

Watch whether those eBay listings actually convert into shipped units, or if Valve’s 72-hour completion rule and account-linking render scalped reservations useless. If the latter happens, expect a second wave of invites to move fast.