The limited supply for Valve’s Steam Deck is creating an opportunity for scalpers to sell the PC gaming handheld for three times or more the normal price.
On eBay, you can find the Steam Deck going for bids at around $1,300 to $1,600, along with “buy now” prices that can reach $2,500 or $2,999. That’s a massive increase, considering the Steam Deck is normally supposed to retail at $399, $529 or $649, depending on the model.
Many of the resellers on eBay are also posting photos, showing they have the Steam Deck in hand, and ready to ship. Others claim they’ve received a Steam Deck pre-order that’ll arrive in Q1 or Q2, and have posted screenshots of the shipping estimate from Valve as proof.
Paying so much for a Steam Deck is seriously a bad deal. In fact, you might be better off spending that money on a desktop PC or laptop. But it seems some consumers have been desperate enough to pay up. eBay’s Terapeak tool indicates that over a dozen Steam Deck units are getting sold each day, with the average selling price at around $1,500, since the handheld’s official launch on Feb. 25th.
Valve actually did institute a way to prevent scalpers from snatching all the Steam Deck supplies. Back in July, when pre-orders for the product first began, the company opened the sales only to consumers, who already owned a Steam account that had made a purchase prior to June 2021.
The other requirement was that each Steam account was limited to only one pre-order, which cost $5 to place. So any would-be scalpers were blocked from creating batches of fake Steam accounts to secure multiple pre-orders. Instead, they could only purchase one unit, like everyone else.
The current problem facing the Steam Deck is the slow roll out. Even if you did place an early pre-order back in July, your shipment may not arrive until this year’s Q3. And if you place a pre-order today, expect the wait to be even longer. So here’s hoping Valve can boost the product’s manufacturing output soon.
