Valve Pledges to Give Away One Steam Deck Every Minute During The Game Awards
Next week’s The Game Awards is going to be very interesting, and not just because of the awards themselves. Valve has something up their sleeves again, and this time it comes in the form of giving away a handheld Steam Deck console every single minute of the show. To put this into context, last year’s awards ran for approximately 3 hours, which would equate to 180 Steam Decks given away this year. That’s a very good incentive to tune in to watch the awards on December 8th.
The model given away is their best one, with a sleek anti-glare screen and 512GB of storage. The stipulation is that spectators must be present in either the USA, Canada, United Kingdom or the European Union. The console is being released in a few Asian countries at the end of December but it will not be in time for next week’s giveaway. In order to win the prize, all users need to do is sign in to Steam, and watch the broadcast from either steam.tv or Steam’s 2022 The Game Awards page. The promotion is for Steam users that made at least one purchase on November 14th between 12:00am – 11:59pm GMT.
Valve is incentivizing users to be very active on their platform and make purchases by rewarding them in many ways, not just with giveaways but also with consistent sales for paid games. Last week’s Autumn Sale featured some fantastic discounts on classic games for as low as under $1, and they haven’t slowed down since then with the announcement of this giveaway. The Steam Deck went through its issues both with production and shipping, and both of which have since been resolved rather smoothly, as you would expect from Valve.
The Steam Deck has had some kinks along the way that needed to be fixed by Valve, such as loud fan noise for example, and this is completely normal for new products that hit the market. More importantly, sales have been high as it’s arguably the top handheld console out right now, and they’re continuing to build on it both by adding to the current model and laying the framework for the blueprints for newer models coming in the future.
It’s really a great prize to win just by tuning in to an awards show. It also gives them more exposure to the full audience tuning in, and allows some new users to familiarize themselves with Valve and their products and services, so it’s a win-win scenario for both sides. With all of the success that the Steam Deck has had up until this point, one can only wonder how they can possibly build on it and make improvements for the next model to be released. If Valve’s track record is any indication, we could be in for an incredible next few years.