News Scalpers Want $5,000 for the Steam Deck

[Admin]

Scalpers have already pushed the price of Valve's new Steam Deck gaming handheld to $5,000 on the secondary market.

Scalpers Want $5,000 for the Steam Deck : Read more

 

[Wolfshadw]

What scares me is that some people will probably pay that much for something they might not see for 10-12 months (if ever).

-Wolf sends

 

[USAFRet]

What scares me is that some people will probably pay that much for something they might not see for 10-12 months (if ever).

-Wolf sends

I just looked on fleabay, and there were several "Sold", at $1500 and up.
Or, supposedly sold.

 

[rarebush]

Worth saying that these presale items are against eBay’s Ts and Cs given the product will not be delivered within 30 days. Presale policy

If anybody wanted to flag a listing, all they need to do is click the ‘report item’ action, then select ‘Listing practices’, ‘inappropriate seller terms’, and finally ‘presale’.

 

[aetolouee]

I'd rather stop playing video games for the rest of my life than feed the low life leeches.

 

[hotaru251]

ppl who pay them deserve to get robbed.

5 grand can build a top end desktop/laptop that would put steamdeck to shame (especially since steam still isnt sure if they can get aroud nthe anti piracy issue it struggles with)

 

[LolaGT]

There are plenty of people willing to hand over money to these scumbags, one only needs to look back over the last year.
There have been many on this very forum that were happy and actually called themselves lucky that they were able to snag a GPU or CPU for double, triple or more of listed MSRP.
As long as they exist, it makes it easy.

 

[USAFRet]

one only needs to look back over the last year

This idiocy is 20 years old.

PlayStation 5's Launch Can't Be Worse Than the PS2's

We doubt that the PS5 (or any modern console) will ever top the weird and wild launch of the PlayStation 2.

www.denofgeek.com

Who knows the worst case of scalping for new consoles? - General Discussion - Giant Bomb

I knew resellers would be everywhere due to extreme high demand for these new systems BUT I saw a seller earlier on Amazon that litterally made me wan

www.giantbomb.com

 

[Neilbob]

All scalpers deserve to have a scalpel taken to their knackers.

 

[Makaveli]

human stupidity is infinite

 

[Giroro]

Just because somebody is trying to sell reservations, doesn't mean (real) people are buying them.
Scalpers will "buy" their own product with a burner account then cancel the deal when the fails to fund. The fake sales keep the asking price high, because you have to look closely to see they aren't really selling.

Steam is still accepting preorders, and I have my doubts that there is a huge amount of mainstream demand. These handheld gaming PCs are usually a very niche market.

 

[RareAir23]

I just want to put this little bit about this out there. Yes I knew the scalpers were going to be pouncing on this. I knew this because they are still ravenously starving for...$$$$$$$! With saying that last sentence I think the scalpers who are really going after Switch OLEDs and Steam Decks at this point aren't the ones who are amateurs and/or who are only just buying 1 or 2, stopping with that and selling that just 1 or 2 and then moving on. I think the scalpers doing this now are the professionals. The ones who do this for an everyday living, who have done this for years long before the pandemic (they started doing this likely with basketball shoes and rare Pokemon cards) and have a ton of financial capitol behind them due to all the scalping they did since before the pandemic began. Taking all that into account, selling Steam Decks for even $3000+ for a product now not due to ship until next year except the 64GB model? That's really pushing the limits to me. Those particular auctions might sell, might not but at least to this consumer writing this: $3000+ for a Steam Deck? I wouldn't pay it. Neither would a lot of people I know. Out!

 

[Heat_Fan89]

This idiocy is 20 years old.

Yes it's true. I remember that time and I used to work for Sony at one of their call centers. There were shortages and as a Sony employee we given the chance to buy one by winning an office lottery (Sony Shuffle ). Fortunately I had already purchased a PS2 on launch day at EBGames. But there were listings for PS2's on the internet and in my local newspapers for $1800+.

 

[excalibur1814]

Seriously, give it 6-8 months and you'll be able to grab one from eBay for £120. Or less.

 

[hushnecampus]

Hopefully the numbers here are reasonably low, given the steps Valve took (one per Steam account, and it has to be an active one).

Also, I suspect there’s a good chance many early pre-orders will arrive in the first shipment even if they were estimated to be delayed, as Valve alter their orders to manufacturers to match the orders they’ve received from customers.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

I preordered one from valve and I’m not buying a video card again, ever, so I guess retailers and video card manufacturers are going to be having a rude awakening once the semiconductor shortage slows down.

 

[TerryLaze]

Seriously, give it 6-8 months and you'll be able to grab one from eBay for £120. Or less.

No you won't. This is highly usable hardware even without steam, it's not just a controller or a stream box, this is a full PC and second hand prices will remain high on it unless broken.

Also, I suspect there’s a good chance many early pre-orders will arrive in the first shipment even if they were estimated to be delayed, as Valve alter their orders to manufacturers to match the orders they’ve received from customers.

AMD still has to be able to make enough APUs and this is where the issues are, AMD only gets that many wafers from TSMC and sony/MS are breathing down their necks.

 

[inanition02]

When I saw this announced, my first thought was "well, I'll be buying this in the Summer Sale in '23-'24 when it's some massive percent off" which is exactly what I did with the Steam controller and the Steam Link device both of which I purchased for pennies on the dollar after they were a couple of years old - not sure if this will follow the "typical" Steam path like those did, but I wouldn't bet against it. Since this is mostly for non-AAA games anyhow, there's no rush for me to go out and buy it...or to feed the scalpers.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

When I saw this announced, my first thought was "well, I'll be buying this in the Summer Sale in '23-'24 when it's some massive percent off" which is exactly what I did with the Steam controller and the Steam Link device both of which I purchased for pennies on the dollar after they were a couple of years old - not sure if this will follow the "typical" Steam path like those did, but I wouldn't bet against it. Since this is mostly for non-AAA games anyhow, there's no rush for me to go out and buy it...or to feed the scalpers.

I guess you have it all wrong: these AMD APUs at that native screen resolution can run AAA games with almost maxed out graphics like it’s nothing.

This isn’t the intel integrated graphics. And the CPU is also quite capable at that resolution, I’d be amazed if the only limit it hits are thermal when on battery or docked.

 

[hushnecampus]

AMD still has to be able to make enough APUs and this is where the issues are, AMD only gets that many wafers from TSMC and sony/MS are breathing down their necks.

Of course, but there are all sorts of logistical complexities we don’t know about that can be tweaked given they have more informtion about demand now. A very simple example is they could reassign someone of the lower available hardware from the tiers that sold less well to those that sold more well, but there are no doubt other options open to them as well. That and their estimates may simply be conservative on the grounds that it’s better customer service under-promise and over-deliver. Apple do this all the time - when you pre-order an Apple product and get an estimate shipping date a fortnight after release you often actually get it on release day.

 

[watzupken]

The more we entertain scalpers, the more it will come back to haunt us with every limited supply hardware being released. Pretty sure we will see more scalper action in future hot hardware releases.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

$5000 for a console which may not play the games you want to play, have as little as 2 hours of battery life, and has unknown graphical capabilities, especially going forward.

If that's not the easiest pass in the world, even for MSRP, I don't know what is.

 

[Wolfshadw]

-Little Johnny
"But MOM!!!!! Little Jimmy across the street said HE'S getting one!!!!!"

-Wolf sends

 

[Bazzy 505]

There wouldn't be any scalpers if there were no daft people with too much disposable income to buy from them.

For 5K wife and i can ditch kids with grandparents, get on a plane and stay liquored in a nice tropical resort for 2 weeks.
If the damn kids want it, they might as well go get a summer job flipping burgers. By the time they get to 5K saved that way
i'll seriously doubt they'd be willing to burn it on fatter version of switch XD

 

[ConfusedCounsel]

When Tom's posted about Valve's servers crashing, I asked if it was Bot stocking scalper's eBay shelves for Christmas. I just got my answer: "Sadly, Yes."

Bots should be banned as a cyber security issue. We have just seen they can take down a retailer's server. While Valve doesn't sell essentials, Target and Walmart do. What if a bot attacked them for essentials. Maintaining the integrity and availability of retail is essential for national security. Imagine what would happen if a foreign actor used bots to overload the servers of the nation's major retailers. We need to demand are representative do something. These Bots, and the resulting scalping, are just warnings of a more dangerous problem on the horizon. Imagine the crisis if all the online retailers went down.