The announcement of the Steam Deck has created a lot of scalpers that pile up Steam accounts and make an insane number of Steam Deck Pre-Orders for a smaller price and resell them on eBay for ridiculous prices.
The scalping began right after the Steam Deck has been announced. Pre-ordering consoles and re-selling them was a trend in June 2021.
Scalpers and Insane Ebay Prices
In order to make a reservation for a Steam Deck, people needed to have at least one purchase on their Steam account until June 2021. This was a strategy for Steam to make sure that people don’t make a ton of new Steam accounts and overload the reservations.
This has led to scalpers coming in and grabbing what they can. Giving them the ability to list the Steam Deck on eBay for a ridiculous price.
The product’s regular price off steam is $399, scalpers on eBay are listing the same product for $1600+.
Scalpers have been listing Steam Decks with proof that they have successfully made a Pre-order for the product and they need to wait for it to actually be delivered. Auctions started to occur on eBay for the Steam Decks.
eBay has spoken to Eurogamer about the scalping situation and that they have removed all orders from their website in late September of 2021, due to their presale policy. This is because all orders through eBay must be guaranteed to ship within 30 days of purchase. With the console not launching until December 2021 at the earliest.
eBay has made an official apology about scalpers and how they don’t support them stating:
“We understand how frustrating it can be for gamers to see overpriced listings for presale hardware,”
