eBay’s clamping down on Steam Deck scalpers, and it is glorious!

It goes without saying that most gamers hate eBay scalpers, who buy hard to access items to resell them for profit to desperate customers. First, they went for our graphics cards, then they went for the latest consoles and now they are after Valve’s Steam Deck PC handheld.

Some eBayers have been trying to sell their Steam Deck pre-orders for insane amounts of money, with some hardware being listed for over £1,000. When Valve’s baseline Steam Deck model costs £349 and its top-tier model costs £569, it is hard not to hate what some people are doing to our beloved PC market. 

Thankfully, eBay has taken action against Steam Deck scalpers, enforcing their presale policies to remove all of these absurd Steam Deck pre-order sales. eBay’s policy is that presale listings must guarantee that items will be posted within 30 days of the sale, and this cannot happen when most pre-ordered Steam Decks aren’t expected to ship until next year. 

Right now, all Steam Deck system listings appear to be removed from eBay UK, and this is good news for the PC market. Hopefully, these eBay scalpers will cancel their pre-orders to bump legitimate customers up Valve’s queue. Still, the more likely outcome is that many of these sellers will list their Steam Deck again once they can order their unit. 

Currently, all new Steam Deck reservations have an expected shipping date in Q2 2022. This shipping date applies to all models, even the 64GB eMMC model.  

Sadly, eBay’s policy enforcement might only delay the inevitable, as scalpers with early Steam Deck units should have no trouble selling their Steam Decks to buyers who would have to wait months otherwise. That said, it is good to see eBay doing something to prevent Steam Deck presales.