However, it seems Valve instituted effective ways to prevent scalpers from taking pre-orders away from actual consumers during Friday’s sale.
(Credit: eBay) As expected, scalpers are already trying to profit off of the Steam Deck by selling confirmed pre-orders for the device from $1,000 to as much as $4,100. The eBay listings for the Steam Deck began to trickle in shortly after pre-orders for the handheld gaming PC kicked off on Friday morning. The product itself starts at $399. But some scalpers are betting desperate consumers will pay more. “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR MAN?!?! PAPA’S GOTTA EAT,” wrote one scalper, who’s trying to sell his Steam Deck pre-order for $5,000 to someone’s who “filthy rich.” The initial batch of pre-orders for the Steam Deck did sell out quickly on Friday morning, which may make the product hard to come by once it ships in December. But in some good news, Valve seems to have come up with effective safeguards to prevent online scalpers from crashing the party. To place a pre-order on Friday, you had to have owned a Steam account that made a purchase prior to June 2021.
