At the time of typing this, the goal was dropped to $50k USD (from $56k), extended the campaign to January 30th, and is 99% funded.
I know, reddit bad, but the creator is active in the r/SteamDeck discord server if anyone has questions.
Edit/update: project is now fully funded!!!
The reason it isn’t available in the EU, yet, is that it isn’t CE certified.
I know. But why?
CE certification is a process that takes time and money to perform
The creator mentioned why on the discord mentioned in the post above. The jist of the reasoning is cost.
But I don’t get it. How many steam decks have been sold in Europe? How can that not be a market for them? Getting the CE label later may work out, but don’t they need the money now?
It takes money to make money. The whole project is a bit of a gamble. While paying for CE certification would probably pay off if this thing got popular, if it flops as a whole, then it would flop even harder.
Basically, because it costs more to do, it’s an even bigger gamble. Even though it could work out, they must’ve done the math and said, hmmm, let’s wait and get some legs under us first.
Heck, interest stalled out already and they barely made their funding. I feel like everyone who was gonna buy one, in the US anyway, has bought one. So how much bigger would Europe be for them? And how much does it cost to get CE certification? I don’t know the answers to these questions. But it’s foggy enough that I can see why they might not want to do it just yet.
For the record I bought one 🤷♂️
Good summary. Guess there are two ways to look at it. I hope they make it so I can buy one.