Its not even worth the 1000+$ Valve is asking for it. Why are people paying even more?
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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Because it's a new thing from Valve.
1 per address until they’re mass produced.
Oh god, not again. Thankfully they won't be able to scalp half-life 3, as that will be sold digitally.
I understood the PoV of the scalpers. They grab something rare to resell. I disagree but I understand.
What I don't understand is, who the fuck actually pays money for those reservations?
who the fuck actually pays money for those reservations?
Dumbasses with more money than sense
couldn't valve just ban the accounts that are using a serial that doesn't match any of their purchase order?
Well then fuck every child that's about to be gifted one of theese I guess.
Steam already stated they're limiting to 1 per household.
The longer timeframe also allows us to do some extra validation on the signups to make sure they're real accounts, with only one per household.
Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries
the only part they can't tell is gifting. i think they could fix that by requiring the account that would have to claim it during purchase. otherwise SN + account + location would pretty much end scalping. and if they actually enforced the one household rule more children would actually get their games...
Scalpers take hold
Valve did the best they could given the demand, this is pure cope from the author for not getting on the reservation queue
Nothing makes sense anymore. People will buy anything if it's just hyped up and rare enough, without any regard to it's utility or intrinsic value. Everything has become bored apes.
And I don't mean to dunk on the steam machine itself, it is a good device for a particular niche. But at twice the price? That's perfectly ridiculous.
How is it that eBay doesn't have any resposibility for helping to crack down on these?
Probably because there is not a firm law on scalping, on top of being international site which makes applying laws even more difficult.
Yea... but also, they're a private business, they don't have to accept it. It's called having integrity.
It's pretty slimey to be like "welp, we know it's immoral, but it's not illegal, so we'll profit off of it".
It's a business and an American one at that. Of course they're going to put profit over morality.
It’s a corporation. They only care about money. Integrity is only important to them if it leads to more money.
And stop it how exactly?
Company policy to delist scalped products. It's quite simple. It's not like these listings are hard to find.
There's so many it's impossible to get them all
Because it's not illegal, just immoral.
This is mostly what it's designed for, peak capitalism. If it weren't for the scam concerns presented by the fact that this is a spot in line and not actually a real product sale, eBay would want to have more of this.
If fleaBay stopped them, they'd just do it somewhere else and then they would lose profits and solve nothing. It's really not their responsibility.
When Ford and Tesla tried to stop stuff like this they were lambasted for infringing on customer freedoms.
https://carbuzz.com/news/ford-sues-john-cena-for-flipping-his-gt-supercar-and-making-a-profit/
Can’t valve just not allow any steam account to register on a steam machine other than the one that preordered it (for a period of time)? I’m guessing that would nip all this in the bud post haste ?
It would probably kill gifts. I guess you could allow the usual steam gift feature, but that again would allow scalpers. The method they're using to attempt to limit it to one per household is a good idea, but it's difficult and still susceptible to people finding ways around it. There is just no easy way to fight them effectively.
The only thing that would truly work is for nobody to buy off them, leaving them sitting on a pile of investment with no returns until they drop to retail prices or send it back to Valve for a refund. But boycotts aren't exactly easy or reliable. We know how hard it can be to hold off on something you really want.
Another case of a shitty few fucking over everyone else.
I don't really see the problem. It's not worth double the price - anyone can go buy a computer and get the same functionality. If it's worth so much to you to have the valve logo on the thing, then that's up to you; the actual value though is in its use as a computer, which you can get by other means.
It's not like a concert ticket where there's no equivalent.
I would guess that scalpers will have to reduce their prices to shift what they've scrambled for when it comes to people actually buying them.
The scalper a protection is also quite bad. Valve only requires a purchase before a certain date. That means scalpers can easily reuse accounts from the Deck and Controller sales…
I said this before but (roughly) sorting the queue by money spend on the platform would make it insanely expensive to scalp, therefore eradicating the practice. Of course that would mean people (like myself) who don‘t spend a lot of money on Steam will need to wait longer, but in the fight against scalpers I think it is worth it. I hate scalpers so much.
I don't see how this can work out for the scalpers. If the prices are higher than retail then people would just buy a computer and play the same steam games on it
There are rich people who would buy a steam machine at any price just to own one.
If it's successful, it won't be rare.
VALVe knows who is buying a console. Just lock it to this person’s account for 90 days and the problem of the scalpers is gone. Sure enough, some people will be having issues as they have lost access to their account. Realistically, this will be a small number which can be addressed by VALVe support
Absolute scumbags
I put in for all 4 variants, got the 512 w/ controller.
I still haven't seen the ordering email yet. I'm bummed because I really wanted the wood faceplate, but I'll settle for the companion cube.
Edit And now no companion cube either.
This is Switch 2 level "this deal is getting worse all the time!"
Pre-order cancelled.
At least you got it. I asked for most expensive one, have over 15 years of steam stuff, probably quite high account value (in number of games and theor value). Zero results. None of my buddies have also gotten any email on topic.
Well, Valve did a randomization of the order queue. So your account value really shouldn't matter
I started with that and then clicked the other 3 when I found out it was a "best of" option.
The lottery system did not work.
It was better than clicking "Next" every second for 45 minutes trying to check out, and then failing to get one. Nothing can truly stop scalpers except the original seller doing the scalping themselves with a silent auction.
What I mean
I'm not suggesting this is a good system. Hence I'm hiding it in a spoiler.
Imagine if Valve launched the sale, and everyone names their own price (with a minimum price). Everyone bids their maximum amount, and Valve just picks the top N people to get one. The rich idiots who just have to have one buy it for whatever price, and more normal people buy it for less, but probably more than the minimum.
Would you have bid $50 more than the min to get one right away? I might have. I dunno. Do people with more money deserve a machine more? Well, no, but that's the world we live in. The lottery is the best alternative we have.