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What if, in addition, a nominal fee was charged just to have a chance to purchase a Steam Machine? Let's say $3 (or whatever). Then, all that money is donated to an organization like Extra Life or Game for Love?
In that way, someone with 5000 scalper accounts knows they're going to be out $15k just to get in line. And everyone else who is trying to buy just one isn't sweating the nominal fee.
I'm genuinely asking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> killed this product on arrival sadly. Rather odd to talk about an as yet unreleased product failing in the past tense.
You may be unfamiliar with the colloquialism. This one is exclusively for unreleased products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_on_arrival#:~:text=In%20a...
What? This is so obviously incorrect that I'm not even sure how to respond to it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this is a promising solution to scalping. Previously, if you had only small numbers of consoles available at launch, scalpers and their bots would claim a large share of them. With Valve's new policy, that share is reduced to s/g , where s is the number of verified Steam accounts controlled by scalpers and g is the number of legit gamer accounts. Since s is likely to be much less than g , s/g is close to zero,…
I've never understood why anti-scalpers just don't work backwards from shipping address. Are these scalpers all really keeping hundreds of actual physical addresses they can receive packages at? Like if you see the limited product has 100 orders going to the same building, or apartment, or whatever then flag it before it goes out. Limit PO Boxes, etc. Sure they can find mules to buy+receive one and then sell to the s…
Ecomm orders want to drop to the distribution center as soon as possible, which means you can't wait until you have a whole bunch of them just so you can analyze which addresses are on multiple orders. You would either need to 1) detect this in the warehouse systems (I spent my career working on these, so I can say with high certainty that is almost definitely Not going to happen, especially if they go through a 3PL) OR 2) you have to cancel orders after they have already dropped to the warehouse (which means wasted labor in the best-case scenario).
None of that is worth the effort to a company who is fundamentally still getting paid the same for the product regardless of if the purchaser is a scalper or not.
I like this randomized reservation approach. What if, in addition, a nominal fee was charged just to have a chance to purchase a Steam Machine? Let's say $3 (or whatever). Then, all that money is donated to an organization like Extra Life or Game for Love? In that way, someone with 5000 scalper accounts knows they're going to be out $15k just to get in line . And everyone else who is trying to buy just one isn't swea…
The pricing is all out of sorts. Close to $500 more expensive than a PS5 for worse performance. I understand this is a PC and you can do other things with it, but if you're buying a gaming device to play games this is a horrible value.
I am pleased to see hardware not being locked down as a selling point: > Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer? It feels very commonsense that you should be able to run whatever you want on the computer that you have purchased, but it is surprisingly uncommon.
I don't understand, what is so special about this? They are selling a x86 PC. All x86 PCs sold by everyone are open and you can install whatever you want. It's commodity hardware packaged into a small box. There is nothing special here. Trying to sell it as it if Valve are more consumer friendly here is nonsense.
If you are comfortable building a custom PC and fixated on the spec sheet sure, it's not that exciting. But there are some rough edges with PC couch gaming that are sanded off with this machine.
> Why a randomized reservation order? [...] we wanted to create a system that would be less frustrating and more fair for everyone. A launch that starts at a specific day and time tends to reward bots, people with fast internet connections, talented gaming fingers for quick F5/refresh reactions, and those who can schedule their life around that moment. By accepting reservation signups over the course of a few days, w…
Yeah, this is a promising solution to scalping. Previously, if you had only small numbers of consoles available at launch, scalpers and their bots would claim a large share of them. With Valve's new policy, that share is reduced to s/g , where s is the number of verified Steam accounts controlled by scalpers and g is the number of legit gamer accounts. Since s is likely to be much less than g , s/g is close to zero,…
> Why a randomized reservation order? [...] we wanted to create a system that would be less frustrating and more fair for everyone. A launch that starts at a specific day and time tends to reward bots, people with fast internet connections, talented gaming fingers for quick F5/refresh reactions, and those who can schedule their life around that moment. By accepting reservation signups over the course of a few days, w…
I don't get why companies don't take advantage of the demand. For example: Start the bidding at BASE_PRICE (BP) + 2400. Then reduce the price by $1 every 3mins over the course of 5 days. Until the BP is met and then just carry on queuing. You could buy it early if you want it that much or just wait an extra couple of days and end up in the queue at the BP. I don't know if it would create pressure on that second it ti…
Insant buy for me because as an owner of a PS5 and Xbox One X, I’ve been using my Steam Deck a lot for gaming on TV using the dock. It works really well. This is just the dream version of that setup.
> Why a randomized reservation order? [...] we wanted to create a system that would be less frustrating and more fair for everyone. A launch that starts at a specific day and time tends to reward bots, people with fast internet connections, talented gaming fingers for quick F5/refresh reactions, and those who can schedule their life around that moment. By accepting reservation signups over the course of a few days, w…
Interesting, as it sounds like a lottery reservation system, which is kinda a neat way to deal with many issues. I'm always supprised that companies don't do a tiered price release, offer it at 200% price, you get it, 150%, you lower down the list and then 100% lottery time, that way they gain from those who can afford to pay more(maybe able to subsidise other sales later and price cuts down the line). Why feed scalp…