I think nobody but valve knows and they are not telling us. We don't know how many units were sold and how the protections were (at least I didn't see anything). Some people seem to assume that scalpers are to blame when a product is sold out really fast (which is understandable when looking at past hardware releases).

Me, I don't think so. I just think people really wanted to get one.

I know the steam deck had good scalper limitations. You had to have a steam account in good standing (no vac bans) that had a game purchase from before the deck was available for purchase, as well as a limit of how many one account could purchase.

There was a limit of 2 steam controllers for this sale, but it sounds like that limit was only per transaction, and didn't prevent an account from placing multiple transactions (if the store would load for long enough to allow it). I don't think any of the other limitations were in place.