Scalpers are some of the worst scum to humanity has produced.
if you seen the pokemon scalpers, pretty much. people who dont even play it try to cash in on it.
This is a problem with every kind of hobby. Anytime something is throttling production or there’s a limited edition, scalper bullshit comes around. It’s one of the big reasons I hate limited editions so goddamn much.
tcp japan is definitely making bank on scalpers, not only limited edition but the pull rate of rares, or the price=usage in irl tournament. they also dont reprint the same card often too. magic had issues with scalping, but i heard its mostly negated by them releasing too many SETS in one year.
My g/f is more or less just a collector. She has binders and binders of cards she collected over 30 years before the scalpers turned the TCG into a commodity. She got so fed up with the scalpers and inflated prices that she started an LLC so she can get wholesale product. She has to compete with big box stores for product, which means she gets way less wholesale than big established stores. She probably sells 75% of the wholesale product/unopened packs and keeps 25% for herself. She charges reasonable prices. She’s making like $2 an hour profit running her LLC after accounting for packaging, shipping, and purchasing new inventory. Even though she can’t get as much product as she wants, she’s always sold out because she isn’t charging scalper prices. She gets cards/packs for herself at reasonable prices, and her small customer base doesn’t have to pay scalper prices.
My FLGS (which is a weirdly massive deal) has the same limits on pokemon pack purchases that everyone else has had to implement, but they recently went one further and now have a rule that children get to cut to the front of the line on restock days. Not a perfect system sure, but the salt from the scalper base has been absolutely legendary.
i heard on another forum, that some stores require the packs to be opened in store, before leaving.
That’s actually really wholesome.
Yeah they’re like corporations and big investors.
what??? I thought it’s not even for sale yet?
Correct. They’re not even selling you a physical machine at that price. They’re just allegedly selling you their place in the preorder lottery for the opportunity to buy one.
I can’t imagine how anyone could possibly be that desperate.
I’m surprised that eBay even allows them to because I think that breaks their seller guidelines. I’m pretty sure merchandise that you don’t physically have on hand You must clearly mark as I don’t have this and as a pre-order and any pre-order is required to be shipped out within 40 days of the sale happening.
I can’t imagine anyone on eBay is able to actually confirm they’ll have it in 40 days
I should be shocked, but I’m not… Some people go to great lengths to get pokemon cards.
pokemon refuses to do anything about scalping they are just halfassing it. the best is to increase the pull rate of rares, preventing them to sell it.
I mean, sure. I have tons of rare knives, too. But a PC is a commodity item; it’s easily susbtituted with any other which is really the whole point of the architecture to begin with.
I think the Steam Machine is neat. I’m still not paying $3000 for one.
While Valve only officially supports 3 devices, it is possible to install its image on any PC (or just run Steam on Linux). But quite a few Steam users don’t realise that.
Also, Valve only officially supports Ubuntu LTS desktop (Gnome). And their own OS of course. Yes, despite having the Steam runtime. The only thing this means is that support agents will say “but did you try installing Ubuntu?”.
Why? It’s not even that compelling at the normal price. If it were 3x the price, who would possibly want to buy it?
The people that bought spacex stock.
Fanboys and “, but I want something official” kind of people.
I don’t get it, either.
If you spend US$3,000 on the Steam Machine your brain must be made of tofu.
For some people, there is no difference between $1000 and $3000. Both are amounts they won’t miss, and availability of the SteamBox is low right now so they’re happy to pay it to get faster access. Tell them they can get a more powerful gaming PC for $3000 and they don’t care. They want to try the Steambox and money is no object.
Basically, don’t necessarily attribute to stupidity what can also be explained by wealth.
full of protein? tell me where! I would switch to eat brains of tofu in a blink
Zombie core post
I didn’t actually see any that sold for that price. Highest I’m seeing currently is 2000. Your comment is still valid at $2000 though.
This may go down as one of the biggest tech flops of all time. Just couldn’t have picked a worse time to release it.
There’s always a bigger flop. Apple Vision Pro is 3 times the price and less use than Steam Machine. Most people reportedly just leave it as a dust gatherer after the honeymoon period is over.
And then we have the OG Steam Machine. It’s a weird product that no one wanted, it isn’t different like a console is, and it isn’t better than a PC can be. It’s a product that isn’t build by themselves, but a joint venture with hardware maker.
Then we have NFT. You can’t top that.
I would argue that at least the Vision Pro offers something no other Apple product does.
The Steam Machine is a compact PC and its largest customer base are people who are invested in Steam, and thus they already own a PC.
Or people like me. I used to own a PC. Life kept happening. I have a huge library. I’d like to dip back in.
It’s the form factor that’s different here. Steam Machine is for the living room like a console, most people build a PC station and use it with a desk. Steam Machine is getting into the market of couch gaming and that’s what they aim for with the form factor and the ease of use. There is market here, but the price is the one thing that failed.
Exactly the steam mahcine isn’t aiming for PC gamers, it is aiming for console players.
Good luck with that. Console players aren’t going to spend $1000 at a volume large enough to make this product viable.
Base PS5: $649.99
PS5 Digital Edition: $599.99
PS5 Pro: $899.99
https://mashable.com/article/sony-playstation-ps5-price-hike-economic-pressure
Steam isn’t the only one affected by the RAM shortage.
I was always more interested in the Steam Frame. That will be my first VR-device ever, and i’m hyped for that.
The Machine has one advantage: Valve will probably keep it on the market for quite a while. When prices get a bit more “normal” again, i’m sure they will reduce the price to match the new reality. The Machine is really more like a PC for people who don’t have the tech skills to setup a DIY PC, and that’s what people are paying for.
Yeah I don’t get why more people don’t understand its just a prebuilt PC with SteamOS.
Because most prebuilts are not designed to be placed in the living room (neither dimensionwise nor acousticwise) except if you pay a shitton for a device with an uncommon form factor, and then you have to configure everything yourself. The Steam Machine combines the form factor of a small, very silent HTPC with enough performance to use it for gaming in an all-in-one package - that definitely is an attractive prospect, and it’s the reason it’s seen with different eyes, even tho - objectively seen - it’s specs arent great at all.
If you wanted one so badly, you probably got into the prenotation lottery. In the case you couldn’t get one, you were put in the prenotation queue meaning that you’ll be probably in for the next wave that shouldn’t take too long to happen.
So who are they selling these to? These scalpers are not the sharpest tools of the shed. But buying ohe at that price is not much better. You must be a special kind of moron to buy that.
There’s enough rich people. If you’re a millionaire, 3k is the equivalent of like $50 for a normal person.
This got me thinking, milionare normally means you have at least a milion right? Where $50 would be a good estimate, but the moment you have 2 milion you go half to $25 and technically 999 milion is still a milionare.
When you get to 2, you become a multi-millionaire until you hit 3 commas. If you had 2, you’d be insulted if you were called a millionaire.
FOMO is strong with a lot of people. A lot of these guys just feel the need to be in the first batch and will buy at any price to be included.
So, as I said, a special kind of moron.
Well, looking at the completed auctions on eBay there are enough people wo are desperate enough.
I know it’s not the intended audience of scalpers. They aim for the people with too much money and fomo. But just remember that scalpers are the only way that the global south will ever get access to this hardware. Valve won’t sell me this computer, I get zero access to the lottery, they won’t ship to my country. But a random scalper on eBay will, without hesitation.
I don’t like consoles, but for contrast, I could go to my nearest mall and buy any current console in a brick and mortar store for a reasonable price, just a bit over the us dollar cost.
I know there’s probably a lot of price fixating cartels for a bunch of hardware stuff. Valve is fighting a losing battle in a space the have zero reputation. But at the same time, scalping, much like piracy, is a service problem. It’s the result of a poor and fragile supply chain and not enough marketing and commerce channels available.
Despite all the measures to deter scalping used on the steam controller, for example, which I think are fine. The fact that 80% of the planet can’t buy it directly from valve means that there will always be a scalping market. Even today the original LCD steam deck with the small ssd sells on eBay for absurd prices. It’s not a healthy second hand market or a bunch of people with desperate FOMO, the original deck is old news already. It’s people using the only purchase means available.
The fact that 80% of the planet can’t buy it directly from valve means that there will always be a scalping market.
I think it’s moronic to rely on scalping. This is a large market share that any competitor worth their money should be ready to jump on. It doesn’t take an MBA to slap together PC components, install SteamOS or Bazzite and sell an unofficial knock-off “console”. The global memory shortage being maybe the only serious obstacle.
Selling or trying to sell?
Who TF is buying it at that price?!people with stupid amounts of money
It worked for the last generation of Xboxes. Personally I was prepared to buy an x series for each of my kids two christmases in a row. However I refused to pay scalper prices and was never able to find them in stock.
I hope scalpers rot in hell for ruining things for the rest of us, but it directly lead to my kids building their own gaming rigs, so that’s cool. More quality time with my kids plus they learned that I actually know something about computers
Pretty sure these are the occasional individuals, not large scale bot nets.
Hmm maybe I should start selling SteamOS usb sticks with auto install script.
Valve’s efforts were never supposed to stop the scalping, only mitigate it.
For $2000, there are pre-built mini PCs with AMD iGPUs that will run circles around the Steam Machine. Just buy one of those and install Bazzite.
Or install Steam OS if you want the closest approximation of a steam machine.
(Like them or not) LTT already showed how to do that last week.
Hot take: You don’t have to buy an overpriced cube, just get a used laptop that’s 5 years old atmost, it can handle most of the games and you can play them on the go
Awesome, people are actually buying this on EBay. Soon we will be seeing news of how many did not get a steam machine at 3x the price. The next couple of month will be pretty entertaining.
I mean it’s not out yet. The raffle for who can buy one hasn’t started. This is just like scammers selling a PS6.
Rich people ruin fucking everything man.
Pro tip: don’t buy obviously overpriced scalper shit.
