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"Customers must meet the following criteria to be able to sign up: You must have a Steam account in good standing. You must have made a purchase on St

by Xirdus 4mo ago

"Customers must meet the following criteria to be able to sign up: You must have a Steam account in good standing. You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026. Limit one signup per household. We will use payment method, shipping address, and other information to eliminate multiple entries."

ajmurmann 4mo ago
That prevents flooding of tickets by a single person but doesn't prevent me from signing up even though I just want to resell
- fc417fc802 4mo ago
  And why should that matter? If Valve wants to sell below market this is a reasonably fair system for doing so. What you do with your purchase is none of their concern.
- nehal3m 4mo ago
  Well if you’re prepared to sell a kidney for a flux capacitor and a DeLorean, go for it.
- jack_pp 4mo ago
  Sure but no one can do anything about your free will. This is about being fair, any ideas to make the system fairer?
  - ajmurmann 4mo ago
    Scalping exists because the sales price is significantly lower than the market value. Just do a Vickery auction and scalping is gone. Because it's avickery auction the price likely wouldn't be totally ludicrous either. If there is a batch of 10,000 units sold the price would be the 10,001th highest bid.
    - chorizo 4mo ago
      In Valve’s, they’re raffling the opportunity to make a purchase. For a generalized Vickery auction, it’s assumed the buyer will complete the bid, but that’s not so in valve’s case. What’s a good solution when there is a significant % of bids that do not complete the purchase?
      - ajmurmann 4mo ago
        You pre-authorize the charge.
    - Xirdus 4mo ago
      If the price is not totally ludicrous then the scalpers outbid pretty much everyone else. If you know MSRP, then normal people bid MSRP whereas scalpers take a million dollar loan and bid all 10,000 units at double MSRP, then sell at triple/quadruple MSRP. If you don't know MSRP, then most people won't know how much to bid, and won't bid at all, leaving just scalpers.
      - ajmurmann 4mo ago
        Scalpers bid high because they know they can get when more. The people who pay more to scalpers on an auction side like eBay would just bid that directly to Valve
        Xirdus 4mo ago
        They wouldn't, because they wouldn't know how much to bid. People pay more on eBay because they see how much more they need to pay. The whole point of a Vickery auction is to eliminate this feedback. A tiny fraction of megawhales will overbid by an order of magnitude because they want the gadget at literally any cost - but the vast majority of people would underbid, specifically because scalpers haven't started selling it yet for inflated prices. The act of putting it on eBay itself increases how much people are willing to pay for it. The big winners would be scalpers, who, being both the professional appraisers and the market makers, are in the best position to bid well and are nearly guaranteed to resell at a higher price.
- mywittyname 4mo ago
  I mean, go for it. Do you really want to risk getting stuck with a $1100 device that you have to now offload (and pay the associated fees)? The corollary to this lottery will ensure that people who want Steam Machines day 1 actually get them at cost. So not only does this negatively impact the supply-side of scalping, but it also impacts the demand-side.
  - ajmurmann 4mo ago
    That risk is exactly what scalpers have been carrying at everyone of these cases.
    - mywittyname 4mo ago
      The difference being the lottery system. When scalpers know they are competing against other scalpers, they know they will corner the market and everyone will pay. Which is how they make money. With the lottery, a good chunk of those systems are going those who would be willing to pay markup for them, but didn't. So the lottery does double-duty - it kills scalper supply and demand for scalped units.
      - mcmoor 4mo ago
        Aaah so scalpers are only as bad as they are because they corner the market. Thanks, I think this is the only reasonable explanation that don't just ignore supply and demand mechanism.
- kodt 4mo ago
  You can fight scalpers by hardware limiting the device to the account that was used to purchase for some set time (2 years or so)
WhyNotHugo 4mo ago
They took the same approach for the Steam Deck, so given that this is a repeating MO, anyone wanting to abuse the system had time to prepare accounts. The payment addresses sound trickier to work around, but abusers can just invent a fake billing address; many payment methods neither receive nor validate this.

by Xirdus 4mo ago

ajmurmann 4mo ago

That prevents flooding of tickets by a single person but doesn't prevent me from signing up even though I just want to resell

fc417fc802 4mo ago
And why should that matter? If Valve wants to sell below market this is a reasonably fair system for doing so. What you do with your purchase is none of their concern.
nehal3m 4mo ago
Well if you’re prepared to sell a kidney for a flux capacitor and a DeLorean, go for it.
jack_pp 4mo ago
Sure but no one can do anything about your free will. This is about being fair, any ideas to make the system fairer?
- ajmurmann 4mo ago
  Scalping exists because the sales price is significantly lower than the market value. Just do a Vickery auction and scalping is gone. Because it's avickery auction the price likely wouldn't be totally ludicrous either. If there is a batch of 10,000 units sold the price would be the 10,001th highest bid.
  - chorizo 4mo ago
    In Valve’s, they’re raffling the opportunity to make a purchase. For a generalized Vickery auction, it’s assumed the buyer will complete the bid, but that’s not so in valve’s case. What’s a good solution when there is a significant % of bids that do not complete the purchase?
    - ajmurmann 4mo ago
      You pre-authorize the charge.
  - Xirdus 4mo ago
    If the price is not totally ludicrous then the scalpers outbid pretty much everyone else. If you know MSRP, then normal people bid MSRP whereas scalpers take a million dollar loan and bid all 10,000 units at double MSRP, then sell at triple/quadruple MSRP. If you don't know MSRP, then most people won't know how much to bid, and won't bid at all, leaving just scalpers.
    - ajmurmann 4mo ago
      Scalpers bid high because they know they can get when more. The people who pay more to scalpers on an auction side like eBay would just bid that directly to Valve
      - Xirdus 4mo ago
        They wouldn't, because they wouldn't know how much to bid. People pay more on eBay because they see how much more they need to pay. The whole point of a Vickery auction is to eliminate this feedback. A tiny fraction of megawhales will overbid by an order of magnitude because they want the gadget at literally any cost - but the vast majority of people would underbid, specifically because scalpers haven't started selling it yet for inflated prices. The act of putting it on eBay itself increases how much people are willing to pay for it. The big winners would be scalpers, who, being both the professional appraisers and the market makers, are in the best position to bid well and are nearly guaranteed to resell at a higher price.
mywittyname 4mo ago
I mean, go for it. Do you really want to risk getting stuck with a $1100 device that you have to now offload (and pay the associated fees)? The corollary to this lottery will ensure that people who want Steam Machines day 1 actually get them at cost. So not only does this negatively impact the supply-side of scalping, but it also impacts the demand-side.
- ajmurmann 4mo ago
  That risk is exactly what scalpers have been carrying at everyone of these cases.
  - mywittyname 4mo ago
    The difference being the lottery system. When scalpers know they are competing against other scalpers, they know they will corner the market and everyone will pay. Which is how they make money. With the lottery, a good chunk of those systems are going those who would be willing to pay markup for them, but didn't. So the lottery does double-duty - it kills scalper supply and demand for scalped units.
    - mcmoor 4mo ago
      Aaah so scalpers are only as bad as they are because they corner the market. Thanks, I think this is the only reasonable explanation that don't just ignore supply and demand mechanism.
kodt 4mo ago
You can fight scalpers by hardware limiting the device to the account that was used to purchase for some set time (2 years or so)

WhyNotHugo 4mo ago

They took the same approach for the Steam Deck, so given that this is a repeating MO, anyone wanting to abuse the system had time to prepare accounts. The payment addresses sound trickier to work around, but abusers can just invent a fake billing address; many payment methods neither receive nor validate this.