French retailer briefly offers the ‘Stim Machine,’ a Steam Machine competitor made of standard PC components for less than a grand
French electronics retailer LDLC briefly offered a compact gaming PC initially branded as the ‘Stim Machine,’ designed as an affordable alternative to Valve’s Steam Machine. The device, later rebranded as the ‘LDLC PC box,’ used standard PC components and was priced below $1,000—undercutting even Valve’s entry-level Steam Machine model, which starts at $1,049. The retailer’s initiative highlights the market demand for lower-cost gaming PCs, as even Valve engineers have expressed concern about their own hardware’s pricing. Though no longer available for purchase, the brief offering demonstrated that retailers can assemble competitive gaming hardware using off-the-shelf components at more accessible price points than premium gaming machines. The product name change from ‘Stim Machine’ to the more generic ‘LDLC PC box’ suggests potential trademark concerns with Steam Machine branding.