Scalping also actively damages the pricing, which is part of the product. Valve wants to sell this product at a specific price, which is targeted to an audience. By scalping and ultimately changing the price, you are hurting both the consumer, who now pays more, and the company, who doesn't see a cent of this increase and is now failing its target.
Scalping also damages the demand for the product, since it creates a submarket that is volatile and unpredictable.
Scalping is a bad thing because by basically any measure, a market with scalping is worse for everybody involved than one with scalping. Except for scalpers, who make money off it by making it worse for everybody else. Which is why scalpers are bad people.
Scalping is a natural "black" market which always pops up to satisfy market demand whenever artificial restrictions are placed on the market.
Even in this case, there will be scalpers providing for people with more money than luck, who want a day one steam machine.
Which, again, hurts both the seller and the vast majority of the buyers.
>Scalping is a natural "black" market which always pops up to satisfy market demand whenever artificial restrictions are placed on the market.
>Even in this case, there will be scalpers providing for people with more money than luck, who want a day one steam machine.
Scalpers, the vast majority of the time, deal with markets with non-artificial restrictions, and use them to their advantage. In this case, Valve has very intentionally designed a system to prevent scalpers because they want people to have a fair chance of getting a product that is very much not artificially restricted. Valve is free to sell to whoever they want, consumers are free to purchase from Valve, and scalpers are in the middle, exploiting the system for profit, and willingly or not pushing for DRM and for binding accounts to devices.
But they only need to do that because of the scalpers! The scalpers aren't adding value, they're adding friction and expecting people to pay extra for it!
Scalpers can only profitably exist when demand at the list price exceeds supply. If you could magically ban scalping, then some number of willing customers wouldn't be able to buy at any price even after jumping through all the hoops.
So are scalpers distributors?
Is the onus on the company/market/"all of us" to find "better" (whatever you think "better" is) distribution methods?
In which way do you see the market for Steam Machines to be artificially restricted?
The same thing happens when governments set price limits.
There's not enough sugar in the world to coat that bullshit.
Scalpers aren't providing anything. The product already exists.
Scalpers benefit customers who are willing to pay the market price but missed out on the lottery and otherwise wouldn't be able to buy at all.
Scalping also damages the demand for the product, since it creates a submarket that is volatile and unpredictable.
Basically the opposite. If there are scalpers, there is a predictable price that I can pay. If there aren't, I have to be lucky or have connections.
Which is why scalpers are bad people.
They are not.
If you entire business is helping the rich ensure the poor lose and raise the price in general, despite what the original provider may have wanted, you are undoubtedly a bad person.
Moreover, that's what happens anyway. If you get one of the slots and you value the difference between what you paid and the "real" (resale) price more than you value having the console, you can still sell it. But then more of the money goes to ordinary customers rather than rewarding people who snipe with bots etc.
I would also point out that you can build a PC to run SteamOS with approximately the same specs for approximately the same price, so it's not clear who is going to be paying a significant premium over the sticker price instead of doing that if they don't get a slot.
When they do this, customers have a conniption.
This works fine for luxury goods, because the whole point is that they are expensive, thus exclusive (see: Porsche, Rolex). But for regular goods, this ends up being penny wise, pound foolish. Yeah, there's a short-term bump in revenues and profits, but it gives competition a massive attack surface, as they can pull away the most loyal customers who are angry over price gouging, and those customers are probably lost forever.
In general customers don't actually care. They want the product and are equally annoyed by it selling out before they can get one and it selling for a price they can't afford, both caused by the company not having enough supply to meet current demand.
The actual reason companies don't like scalpers in contexts like this has to do with why Valve is making a console to begin with. Is it because they want to compete with Dell and HP in the market for gaming PCs? No, it's because they want to compete with Microsoft and Sony in the market for distributing games. Which in turn means they want their device to have an attractive price so that more people get one instead of getting a competitor's console. Their expected profit is primarily from selling games rather than hardware.
Selling the initial batch for a higher price is bad for that, because who is going to pay the higher initial price? Their most dedicated customers, who would have bought one from the next batch anyway if they don't get one of these. The ones who would only pay the intended sticker price are the ones who would buy the competitor's console instead of theirs if they had to pay more, and those are the customers they most want to get one immediately before the competition gets their money first.
We'll have to agree to disagree here because in my little bubble people are livid and have been swearing off things due to perceived price gouging. For me it was cereal. I like it but manufactures trying to squeeze $12 a box for it put me off enough that I just don't go down that aisle anymore. Now I eat granola.
I don't think we "need" scalpers though, but they are a fundamental part of markets, and arise when you are trying to break the natural flow of markets. Scalpers are the markets punishment for trying to have your cake and eat it too.
As an adult I have rarely wanted things as badly as I did when I was a kid. But I can sure outbid them.
I think you might actually be maximally wrong, as those with means have plenty of entertainment options compared to those without.
They buy up ALL the stocks. Then puts them on auction sites after supply had hit as close to zero as possible. That's not how economics work by the books.
It's not a perfect system, but money is how we as a society determine how to allocate scarce resources. People labor under the promise that having additional money will give them an advantage in this type of situation.
But... perhaps these guys are playing a longer game? Reputation has value as well and from other comments this move seems to boost reputation significantly.