Valve announced Steam Machine pricing and everyone's mad at the wrong people.

Let me explain — and to start with, no, I'm not thrilled it's starting at $1,049. But I'm also not surprised, and the discourse around it is missing the actual story so badly it's almost impressive.When Valve announced the Steam Machine back in November 2025, the internal target was reportedly around $749. That was the goal. Then RAMageddon happened.DDR5 that was sitting at $80-120 for a 32GB kit at mid-2025 lows is now $300-500. DDR4 — the supposed "cheaper" fallback — went from $55-70 to $250-350. In roughly a year. That's not a typo. We're talking 300-500% increases across the board.Framework raised their DDR5 upgrade prices 50%, then raised Desktop prices by up to $460, then had to stop selling standalone RAM entirely just to fight scalpers. Their CES 2026 read on the situation: "a challenging year and possibly even years for consumers." Apple pulled high-memory Mac mini and Mac Studio configurations from their own store because they couldn't get the RAM to build them. Tim Cook…