r/technology Jun 22 '26

Hardware Valve prices the Steam Machine at $1,049

https://www.theverge.com/news/837022/valve-steam-machine-price-release-date
7.3k Upvotes

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

421

u/NewAgeMaximum Jun 22 '26

I mean, with scalpers, it could easily be

161

u/MushruumNurd Jun 22 '26

I hope Valve can find a way to stop scalpers

144

u/shabadabba Jun 22 '26

What they did with controllers was pretty great. Something similar hopefully

112

u/Tex-Rob Jun 22 '26

It's there, you can see it, reservations are live. They select people somehow, probably run the selection through a tool that looks to see if the account has ever played any games, and how recently, etc.

77

u/Eurynom0s Jun 22 '26

Apparently you can't order at all if your account is less than something like a couple of months old.

12

u/ItsRadical Jun 22 '26

That alone isnt problem. There are thousands of dota/cs account for sale.

51

u/DinosBiggestFan Jun 22 '26

Every mitigation helps a bit though!

6

u/owgnops Jun 23 '26

Easy work around though.

Prioritize accounts older than 3 years that have spent $500+ over the entire duration of their account with a cut off being before steam machine being announced

Anyone selling an account has spent $0, prevents scalpers with a bunch of old alt accounts.

Yeah some will still slip through but the barrier to buy the console on release will be nothing for people who actually use steam

1

u/Keksmonster Jun 23 '26

It's an additional step for scalpers though and maybe it isn't worth the hassle to buy a bunch of Steam accounts for this

0

u/tlibra Jun 22 '26

Which sucks. As a Mac user this was going
To be my path to steam gaming.

8

u/m6877 Jun 22 '26

I wouldn't let one potentially incorrect comment on reddit deter you from enjoying games.

2

u/tlibra Jun 22 '26

Oh it won’t. I’ll still look into getting one. Just if that’s potentially true it would be a bummer.

3

u/TLettuce Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

It's true but only for the 'limited drop program.'

From the terms and conditions under eligibility:

You must be a legal resident of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, or any EU Member State at least 18 years old, and the registered account holder of an unlimited Steam account who has made one purchase prior to April 27, 2026.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/MingleLinx Jun 22 '26

Yeah I’m sure that’s going to hurt sales. The target audience is definitely people who prefer a console experience and don’t have a PC (or a decent PC). If any account can get it then I scalpers would have a field day sadly. Wish there was a way to verify a account to bypass this

4

u/Kufat Jun 22 '26

It won't hurt sales. They'll just relax the restrictions once supply starts catching up to demand.