Scalpers are already selling the Steam Deck for over $1,000

[midian182]

A hot potato: In a depressingly familiar sight, listings for the Steam Deck have appeared on eBay with prices over $1,000, despite Valve placing several anti-scalping measures in place when it made the device available for reservation a few days ago.

Following the Steam Deck announcement, Valve allowed consumers to preregister for the handheld by paying a $5 deposit that is applied to the final cost when the devices get closer to their shipping dates.

In addition to the reservation fee, the only people able to pre-order the Steam Deck within the first 48 hours of availability were those who had bought something on Steam before June 2021. The first shipments are scheduled to begin in December 2021, but the huge demand has seen Valve change the availability for new pre-orders

Do not buy these!

The $399/64GB base version of the Steam Deck will ship in Q1 2022 for new reservations. The $529/256GB model is expected in Q2 2022, and the $649/512GB variant is scheduled for Q3 2022.

With the change in shipping times for new orders, scalpers have been selling reservations for Steam Decks that will ship in December—even though Valve doesn’t guarantee they’ll be sent out during this month. There are even some eBay listings with vague “2022” dates.

The good news is that eBay told Kotaku the listings are being removed as they violate the website’s “Presale Policy,” which states all pre-sales items must ship within 30 days. There are only four Steam Decks on the site at the time of writing.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/90471-scalpers-already-selling-steam-deck-over-1000.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I personally want the alienware UFO.

But when I really think about it, there's nothing I play that this would work with besides an RPG - which probably wouldn't look that great at this resolution.

The sticks are too slow to play CS GO - you'll get killed immediately.

 

[Dimitriid]

I remember a lot of people came down on me telling me the GDP Win 3 costed at least double what the steam deck will.

Would you look at that: Scalpers. There's also about a 0% chance Valve's launch won't be plagued with low supply and production difficulties because well, that's just the entire industry now: perpetual claims of constrained supply to keep demand (And henceforth, prices) as high as possible with no regulatory body stepping in to stop price fixing.

So *in theory* the steam deck has a much better price. In practice, you'll be paying GDP Win 3 prices at least for a year or so after launch. Valve might have enough money to get slightly better deals on parts and to sell at a slight loss during normal circumstances but well, normal circumstances passed away in late 2019, there doesn't seems to be a path to go "back to normal" anymore.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

If I can get 2-3x the price I might be tempted to scalp.

 

[yukka]

I remember a lot of people came down on me telling me the GDP Win 3 costed at least double what the steam deck will.

Would you look at that: Scalpers. There's also about a 0% chance Valve's launch won't be plagued with low supply and production difficulties because well, that's just the entire industry now: perpetual claims of constrained supply to keep demand (And henceforth, prices) as high as possible with no regulatory body stepping in to stop price fixing.

So *in theory* the steam deck has a much better price. In practice, you'll be paying GDP Win 3 prices at least for a year or so after launch. Valve might have enough money to get slightly better deals on parts and to sell at a slight loss during normal circumstances but well, normal circumstances passed away in late 2019, there doesn't seems to be a path to go "back to normal" anymore.

Is it really that bad? These are scalpers trying to sell their preorders which they would have only been able to get by having a steam account with purchases before june 2021 so generaly legitimate accounts. They are selling them because the preorder delivery dates for new preorders have been put back. But if you want to preorder one yourself then you can reserve a preorder right now, and it will be msrp direct from valve if you have patience.

I get that some people won't have patience and they want their stuff right now but this seems to be the best preorder direct to customers since issues started. Compared to all the recent xbox/ps4/amd/nvidia stock searching and crazy ebay pricing its really very sensible.

 

[Dimitriid]

Is it really that bad? These are scalpers trying to sell their preorders which they would have only been able to get by having a steam account with purchases before june 2021 so generaly legitimate accounts. They are selling them because the preorder delivery dates for new preorders have been put back. But if you want to preorder one yourself then you can reserve a preorder right now, and it will be msrp direct from valve if you have patience.

I get that some people won't have patience and they want their stuff right now but this seems to be the best preorder direct to customers since issues started. Compared to all the recent xbox/ps4/amd/nvidia stock searching and crazy ebay pricing its really very sensible.

Ok in fairness to some of your points I can concede this much: the steam deck is a highly popular announcement so *any* kind of consumer electronic that receives such level of press coverage and opens up pre-orders probably would translate into scalpers as well.

So the fact that we have scalpers right now is not necessarily linked to whenever Valve will be able to manage the launch with sufficient units to meet demand I can give you that much.

However, for the additional factor I mentioned which is an overall constrain on supply for any semiconductor and specially AMD at this point having yet another (possibly major) console to handle while most of TSMC it's been gobbled up by Apple anyway, do you honestly think Valve will manage anything beyond a paper launch?

It's almost inevitable that there will be severe scalping of the units on release simply because if not even Microsoft or Sony could escape the constrains of the current market, Valve has basically no chance in hell of succeeding where these much bigger and much more experienced hardware players failed thoroughly as we are close to reaching a year of supply issue for both.

 

[mbrowne5061]

Ok in fairness to some of your points I can concede this much: the steam deck is a highly popular announcement so *any* kind of consumer electronic that receives such level of press coverage and opens up pre-orders probably would translate into scalpers as well.

So the fact that we have scalpers right now is not necessarily linked to whenever Valve will be able to manage the launch with sufficient units to meet demand I can give you that much.

However, for the additional factor I mentioned which is an overall constrain on supply for any semiconductor and specially AMD at this point having yet another (possibly major) console to handle while most of TSMC it's been gobbled up by Apple anyway, do you honestly think Valve will manage anything beyond a paper launch?

It's almost inevitable that there will be severe scalping of the units on release simply because if not even Microsoft or Sony could escape the constrains of the current market, Valve has basically no chance in hell of succeeding where these much bigger and much more experienced hardware players failed thoroughly as we are close to reaching a year of supply issue for both.

Right now, you're only allowed to pre-order one Steam Deck, not even 'one of each type', just one, only.

Assuming that these scalpers are legit (and not just scamming people out of money, with no intention of ever delivering), and are selling units that they will eventually receive, then that will be the only one they can sell until it becomes generally available on Steam's site (after all pre-orders have been filled). And if you buy from them, you're still getting your unit after the Scalpers receive it - you're not even jumping the line.

Presumably, everyone who 'must have it ASAP' already has a Steam account and had it prior to June, and they bought a pre-order. That alone kills the market for scalpers, since everyone else who has chosen to wait is unlikely willing to pay a markup to get the Deck sooner.

IMO, nVidia couldn't pull this off due to their board partners, but Sony and Microsoft probably could have done something like this: limit preorders through their site to those who had accounts prior to the announcement, and limit one consoler per account for preorders; then strong arm their retail partners to do the same thing for online pre-orders. This would have essentially forced scalpers to go store-to-store to find stock, and eliminate online purchasing via bots as an avenue for scalpers.

 

[yukka]

Ok in fairness to some of your points I can concede this much: the steam deck is a highly popular announcement so *any* kind of consumer electronic that receives such level of press coverage and opens up pre-orders probably would translate into scalpers as well.

So the fact that we have scalpers right now is not necessarily linked to whenever Valve will be able to manage the launch with sufficient units to meet demand I can give you that much.

However, for the additional factor I mentioned which is an overall constrain on supply for any semiconductor and specially AMD at this point having yet another (possibly major) console to handle while most of TSMC it's been gobbled up by Apple anyway, do you honestly think Valve will manage anything beyond a paper launch?

It's almost inevitable that there will be severe scalping of the units on release simply because if not even Microsoft or Sony could escape the constrains of the current market, Valve has basically no chance in hell of succeeding where these much bigger and much more experienced hardware players failed thoroughly as we are close to reaching a year of supply issue for both.

I have a reservation to pre-order a 512GB model myself in Q2 2022 or whenever they are available if there is a delay and I will expect that it will arrive for MSRP. There will be people scalping but I was generally alluding to the difference between this methodology and the Nvidia/ATI GPU releases or PS5 and Xbox where there was no chance to pre-order them or you were up against bots run by organised scalpers or miners who seemed to buy up the vast majority of inventory to mine or resell.

Generally I think scalping is bad and there will be shortages and people will profit. I won't. I will wait for my preorder to arrive once I get the chance to place it in Q2. Anyone else wanting one should reserve a slot. After all, I imagine most people paying these silly prices are doing so because there is no guarantee that they will get one at a later date when the prices come down. With this then you do.

 

[Rayneofpayne]

Uhm, there are no confirmed preorders for the steam deck of any of the 3 SKUs, all it was is a reservation of $5 to be put in a que in order to preorder it when they have stock of the units.....so technically the ebay listings are fraudulent, on top of these people being really bad capitalists(and that is a kind phrasing)

 

[Rayneofpayne]

I have a reservation to pre-order a 512GB model myself in Q2 2022 or whenever they are available if there is a delay and I will expect that it will arrive for MSRP. There will be people scalping but I was generally alluding to the difference between this methodology and the Nvidia/ATI GPU releases or PS5 and Xbox where there was no chance to pre-order them or you were up against bots run by organised scalpers or miners who seemed to buy up the vast majority of inventory to mine or resell.

Generally I think scalping is bad and there will be shortages and people will profit. I won't. I will wait for my preorder to arrive once I get the chance to place it in Q2. Anyone else wanting one should reserve a slot. After all, I imagine most people paying these silly prices are doing so because there is no guarantee that they will get one at a later date when the prices come down. With this then you do.

Q3 is the 512gb version, q2 is the 256gb.

 

[Rayneofpayne]

Right now, you're only allowed to pre-order one Steam Deck, not even 'one of each type', just one, only.

Assuming that these scalpers are legit (and not just scamming people out of money, with no intention of ever delivering), and are selling units that they will eventually receive, then that will be the only one they can sell until it becomes generally available on Steam's site (after all pre-orders have been filled). And if you buy from them, you're still getting your unit after the Scalpers receive it - you're not even jumping the line.

Presumably, everyone who 'must have it ASAP' already has a Steam account and had it prior to June, and they bought a pre-order. That alone kills the market for scalpers, since everyone else who has chosen to wait is unlikely willing to pay a markup to get the Deck sooner.

IMO, nVidia couldn't pull this off due to their board partners, but Sony and Microsoft probably could have done something like this: limit preorders through their site to those who had accounts prior to the announcement, and limit one consoler per account for preorders; then strong arm their retail partners to do the same thing for online pre-orders. This would have essentially forced scalpers to go store-to-store to find stock, and eliminate online purchasing via bots as an avenue for scalpers.

You are not preordering anything, all they allowed you to do is get a line in que in order to preorder it when they have stock.

 

[Rayneofpayne]

Is it really that bad? These are scalpers trying to sell their preorders which they would have only been able to get by having a steam account with purchases before june 2021 so generaly legitimate accounts. They are selling them because the preorder delivery dates for new preorders have been put back. But if you want to preorder one yourself then you can reserve a preorder right now, and it will be msrp direct from valve if you have patience.

I get that some people won't have patience and they want their stuff right now but this seems to be the best preorder direct to customers since issues started. Compared to all the recent xbox/ps4/amd/nvidia stock searching and crazy ebay pricing its really very sensible.

It is because it is falsely claiming they have a preorder, which of all 3 SKUs valve allowed nobody to preorder anything, you put down a $5 reservation to be put in a que in order to prepurchase or preorder after they have a count as to how much stock they have of the item in their inventory to actually sell.
So the listings are falsified.....so yes it is bad because they are selling something they don't officially have.

 

[yukka]

Q3 is the 512gb version, q2 is the 256gb.

I saw this today. When I reserved it I saw Q2 2022. Either way it’s a deposit on a preorder that will be offered to me when it’s available which will be before it goes on general sale. I don’t mind having till Q3 to see how it shapes up before I place the order.

 

[yukka]

It is because it is falsely claiming they have a preorder, which of all 3 SKUs valve allowed nobody to preorder anything, you put down a $5 reservation to be put in a que in order to prepurchase or preorder after they have a count as to how much stock they have of the item in their inventory to actually sell.
So the listings are falsified.....so yes it is bad because they are selling something they don't officially have.

I was comparing it to the other “paper launches” where you couldn’t be guaranteed a preorder. **** the scalpers

 

[yukka]

You are not preordering anything, all they allowed you to do is get a line in que in order to preorder it when they have stock.

And that’s a good thing because it stops scalpers profiting.

 

[Danny101]

The Scalp Economy. Low Supply, High Demand. In this case, the scalpers might have overplayed their hand. The joke's on them. This gaming device is neat and interesting for sure, but despite 'the huge demand has seen Valve change the availability for new pre-orders' I still don't believe the demand is really all that high.

 

[yukka]

The Scalp Economy. Low Supply, High Demand. In this case, the scalpers might have overplayed their hand. The joke's on them. This gaming device is neat and interesting for sure, but despite 'the huge demand has seen Valve change the availability for new pre-orders' I still don't believe the demand is really all that high.

I was looking at the options for sharing steam libraries - its just too difficult to police on PC. IF there was a way of doing what Xbox does (maybe Sony do as well in a way) and allowing one device as a home device that lets anyone logged in use all the games (so maybe my wife) and still allows the same games simultaneously on the steamdeck by the main account (which would be my account that bought the library) then it would sell more. I would definitely love to play coop with my wife in all my games using my PC and the steam deck but the cost of some of the games will limit our options. Still quite cheap to grab the odd key here and there for older games but its not a clear-cut hardware seller in that respect.