•  tal   ( @tal@lemmy.today ) 
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    7 months ago

    There’s a reliable way to combat scalping in general. Start selling the item at a high price or in larger quantity and then cut the price whenever sales drop off.

    Scalpers can only make money by scalping something when it is being sold below what the market is willing to pay for it in the quantity in which it is available.

    On a non-economic note, I’d add that I don’t think I’d want to buy an easily-modified Linux computer system from some random person unless I planned to wipe it. How do you know that the thing hasn’t been rootkitted?

    •  ono   ( @ono@lemmy.ca ) OP
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      167 months ago

      There’s a reliable way to combat scalping in general. Start selling the item at a high price or in larger quantity and then cut the price whenever sales drop off.

      That alone might be effective at reducing scalping, but would also put the item beyond the reach of entire income classes.

      • The higher price isn’t permanent.

        I’ve worked in camera retail and the local shops do just that, actually, and it’s effective. The FOMO people get their stuff first at a higher price, the shop gets a boost in margins, and everyone else gets to enjoy cheaper prices three months later (and have the early adopters sit through the bugs and first-run issues).

    • Can’t really do that with such a hot product. Would cause too much PR damage and outrage. Companies don’t do it because this way they basically outsource the PR problem to the scalpers while allowing them to play innocent.

      The level of outrage over supply issues for a video game console is disproportionate a lot of the time. Outrage that would be better directed elsewhere, but I digress.

  • 🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

    Click here to see the summary

    With the released of the Steam Deck OLED and the Steam Deck OLED Limited Edition tomorrow, Valve has given out a little bit more info on how they plan to combat scalpers.

    I’ve seen a surprising amount of people confused on this across the net thinking the Steam Deck OLED as a whole is limited but it’s not.

    Additionally, their FAQ also notes for the normal 512GB and 1TB Steam Deck OLED models you will only be able to purchase “1 model of Steam Deck OLED per customer per week” but they plan to relax that when they’re confident they can meet demand.

    They will switch to the reservation queue if needed and email people when it’s ready but Valve also said “we will be refreshing inventory of Steam Deck regularly, and do not foresee long queue times like we saw with the Steam Deck LCD launch”.

    All models go live at the same time at 10AM PST / 6PM UTC on November 16th on the Steam Deck store.

    Be sure to follow GamingOnLinux on YouTube for regular Steam Deck videos!


    Saved 39% of original text.

    • Bad Bot! You stripped out the only important part of the article:

      For the special Limited Edition version Valve has said:

      You need to be in the United States or Canada.
      Your account needs to be in good standing.
      Your account needs to have made a purchase on Steam before November 2023.
      Only one unit may be purchased per account.
      

      If their experiment with this extra Limited Edition model goes well, we may see others come in future.

      Additionally, their FAQ also notes for the normal 512GB and 1TB Steam Deck OLED models you will only be able to purchase “1 model of Steam Deck OLED per customer per week” but they plan to relax that when they’re confident they can meet demand.