When Valve announced the Steam Deck yesterday, it also revealed a plan to use the limited supply to prevent resellers from profiting: those who pre-order must have purchased on Steam before June 2021. The goal is to prevent people from acquiring large numbers of new Steam accounts, using them to pre-order large numbers of Steam Deck games, and later selling them off at inflated prices.

While this may be a strategy to prevent organized resellers from making money, it is not a perfect firewall; Steam Deck pre-orders opened today, and online auction site eBay is already seeing "confirmed order pre-orders" at prices far above cost. For example, in one 64GB listing, bidding started at $550, and the "Buy It Now" price is $750, nearly double the usual $399. The lowest price I saw for the 512GB was $949, with at least one true optimist asking more than double that.

And it's selling: this 256GB model was $850, and this 512GB unit was a relative bargain at $975. This one, on the other hand, sold for a whopping $1,599.

The obvious question is why would buyers pay such a large sum of money for hardware that they cannot even pre-order yet, instead of pre-ordering it themselves? Maybe some people have too much money and are willing to pay hundreds of dollars extra to be the first to get their hands on a Steam Deck: actual pre-orders will be offered in the order in which they were placed, and the ship date has already been pushed back. Currently, the 512GB units are expected to begin shipping in Q3 2022.

More likely, however, Steam Deck pre-orders are currently only available in the US, UK, EU, and Canada. In other words, those living outside the US, UK, EU, and Canada, such as China, Australia, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, are currently out of luck.

Personally, I think it's silly to pay big bucks for the ability to play Steam games on a small screen with an analog stick and trackpad where you can do other things, but Valve's restrictions at least seem to keep reselling to a minimum. And this is inevitable anyway: in September 2020, Nvidia said it was "doing everything artificially possible" to stop the resale of RTX 3080s on eBay, and in January 2021, cards on eBay averaged $1,300 (85% above normal retail price) when sold.

We have been able to make some Steam Deck reservations shortly after they went live, but many people have experienced server errors and other problems. Preorders are still available, but as noted, shipping dates continue to be pushed back.