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!

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?

There's not enough sugar in the world to coat that bullshit.

Scalpers aren't providing anything. The product already exists.

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.