During the last year it’s been incredibly hard to procure certain items. Graphics cards, game consoles, and more have been hard to come by at retail prices. They’ve been scooped up by scalpers who then jack the price up and sell it on the secondary market, sometimes for prices as much as double the retail price. With the announcement of Valve’s Steam Deck, they don’t want this to happen to them and are tackling scalping with their pre-order process for the device.
Instead of just being able to head to the Steam storefront and pre-order a Steam Deck, interested parties will only be able to purchase a Steam Deck if they have an existing account that meets a couple of conditions. 1. The account needs to be in good standing. 2. The account will need to have made a purchase prior to June 2021. These two rules will apply for the first 48 hours of pre-sells for the device. It’s unclear what sort of stipulations will be in place once this 48-hour period expires.
The Steam Deck is set to arrive just in time for Christmas and those who do pre-order the item will need to put down a $4 reservation. Once you’ve completed this process you will need to pay the full amount in December when the console launches.
The Steam Deck could definitely serve a niche that could make the product a very hot item. However, not everyone is willing to purchase above and beyond retail price for something such as this so the company’s move to attempt to limit scalping and keep the item available to loyal customers who want one seems like a good move. We’ll see if it works.
