Steam Deck already faces a scalper problem

**This story about portable gaming hardware, boiled down, in 1:17 minutes.**

What's the fuss?

A powerful new handheld gaming PC will hit the market in December, allowing anyone to play almost any PC game on the go. With the underwhelming new Nintendo Switch recently announced, the timing is impeccable, but already being resold at hefty prices.

The situation

Steam, the largest digital marketplace for PC games, is synonymous with PC gaming itself.

Through making billions of dollars per year mostly by taking a controversial 30% cut from games sold on its platform, Valve (the company behind Steam) sure knows how to make a buck.
It seems like that knowledge has led to the development of an almost-direct competitor to the Nintendo Switch.

Dubbed the Steam Deck, the powerful device will allow gamers to play their PC games on-the-go.

With specifications rivaling modern gaming computers, the Steam Deck is the most powerful portable gaming system we have ever seen (excluding gaming laptops).
After only a day, pre-orders already seem to have sold out and auctioned off on e-commerce sites for ridiculous prices.

Boiling it down

This new device has been dubbed by many as what the upcoming Nintendo Switch OLED model should have been closer to.

Although Nintendo fans welcomed the addition of a fancier screen, many wanted a more powerful device to play their games at higher resolutions or smoother framerates.
The Steam Deck addresses this by being powerful enough, but gamers should approach with caution given Valve's poor track record of supporting their hardware products over time.

Especially during the pandemic, the world is facing a semiconductor shortage that is limiting the supply of computer hardware - giving rise to a massive scalper problem.

Scalpers at large have been pre-ordering upcoming tech products and reselling them at egregious price multiples to take advantage of mass demand.
Some affected companies have adopted anti-scalping initiatives, including Valve, but sadly to no avail.

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