| ▲ | KumaBear 4 hours ago |
| If only scalpers didn’t scoop up every unit |
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| ▲ | bluetidepro 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I don't fully understand this narrative that is going around about scalpers and the controller. So many people online are claiming it was only scalpers who were able to purchase one. I am also not a scalper (as someone else said), and was able to purchase one. We don't know how many they actually had in stock in total but let's say it's around 30K, from what I have searched on eBay and other reselling sites it would only seem like less than 1% of the stock is being sold by resellers/scalpers. I think it was just a high demand product. I know scalpers are a problem in much of the entertainment industry right now, but it's also becoming a scape goat for anything you just weren't able to buy yourself. It's quite annoying and getting old fast. |
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| ▲ | iknowstuff 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It’s hard to participate in any gaming communities because you quickly realize they’re all kids who have no idea about markets but they all talk like foremost experts on every subject | | |
| ▲ | cortesoft an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | This is not just gaming communities and it is not just kids. The number of adults who don't understand basic supply and demand is astonishing. Every discussion about Ticketmaster and/or scalpers is full of people who think if it wasn't for scalpers and ticketmaster, we could all go to every concert we want to for a reasonable price. It is the same thing with the tech community and the price of hard drives, RAM, and GPUs right now. I have seen so many comments by people saying they "aren't going to support the price gouging" and seem to think manufacturers are just taking advantage of the hype to increase their prices. | | |
| ▲ | goolz an hour ago | parent [-] | | Does Ticketmaster not amplify prices and use perceived scarcity to drive up prices? They can due that because Live Nation is a monopoly in all but name. | | |
| ▲ | cortesoft 37 minutes ago | parent [-] | | If the tickets still sell out at the higher prices, than it is real scarcity, not artificial scarcity. Each show has a set number of seats... it isn't an artificial monopoly, it is an intrinsic monopoly. People don't want to just go to A concert, they want to go to a SPECIFIC concert, and a concert venue only holds a set amount of people. |
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| ▲ | kbelder 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Future HN posters in training. | |
| ▲ | tyg13 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't think you can really escape this anywhere online. Hacker News has the same problem, really. |
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| ▲ | flumpcakes 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I managed to buy one, I also have no intention to sell it anytime soon. I do wish there were better protections against scalpers though, they are a blight. | |
| ▲ | BadBadJellyBean 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's also very important to understand that Valve has 100% control of the marketplace. They don't have to hope that Best Buy or Walmart or whatever secure their system against scalpers. They can enforce account history requirements and rate limiting or what ever they please. I'd be extremely surprised if they didn't do that. | | |
| ▲ | 3form 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | From what I've read the limitation was having a "premium" account (spent at least $5 on Steam) and maximum controllers was 3 per account. EDIT: I see others here mention 2 max. Haven't heard that before, but that makes more sense to me. |
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| ▲ | BadBadJellyBean 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I really wonder how many scalpers there were. I got one. I am not a scalper. Maybe it was just high demand for limited stock. |
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| ▲ | wldcordeiro 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | These days it's hard to tell and there's always a mix of both with any high demand items so it makes the stock limits even more pronounced. With how Valve has done hardware releases lately though I imagine it's more a stock limitation. | | |
| ▲ | embedding-shape 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > These days it's hard to tell Is it really? I go to my "local" second-hand marketplace and I see countless of listings for the new Valve Controller. I think it's fair to say most of those aren't "Ops, I made a purchase and I can't return it" but most likely being scalpers. No doubt, some of them are fake as well, but regardless, tends to be fairly easy to see when things are being scalped or if it's actually just high demand, if it's the latter, you don't see tons of second-hand listings the day after it opened. | | |
| ▲ | BadBadJellyBean 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I understand but you don't know how many people got one to keep it compared to how many just resell it. | | |
| ▲ | embedding-shape 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > but you don't know how many people got one to keep it compared to how many just resell it But you do? If someone puts it up on second-hand markets, they're not intending to keep it, they're intending to resell it, why put it up otherwise? | | |
| ▲ | bluetidepro 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Right, they're saying you only see the side of the resellers, you have no idea the number of people who purchased it to keep it (like many of us in the thread). So in reality you may be only seeing less than 1% of stock for resell and not the 99% that are just buying it to keep it like normal. It's just confirmation bias that you assume everyone is buying to resell it cause that's all you're able to see. |
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| ▲ | opan 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I also got one and didn't think scalpers were the problem at the time. I have since seen eBay listings of people trying to sell the controllers (that they don't even have yet) for 3x the price, though, so they maybe did play a role. There was a limit of 2 controllers per Steam account and they sold out within 30 minutes, so not sure if bots were used or what. There wasn't a lot of time to mess around. I've seen a lot of people who wanted one couldn't get one. Personally I added it to my cart about 2 minutes before the official start time and then it took 12 minutes or so of retrying to actually check out. | | |
| ▲ | ai_ an hour ago | parent [-] | | I added it to my cart 2 minutes before and spent 3 hours trying before realizing that just because it's in your cart doesn't mean it exists since it was actually out of stock. |
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| ▲ | DauntingPear7 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I got 2. 1 for me and 1 for my brother. I sat with the page loaded and waiting. It opened a few minutes early and I was able to still order a 2nd about 5 minutes into sale |
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| ▲ | Computer0 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I think valve typically has pretty good scalper protection. Was that not the case this time? |
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| ▲ | BadBadJellyBean 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | mitkebes 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
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