Overview
- Buyers who secured randomized reservation slots for the Steam Machine have posted those entitlements for sale on eBay and other marketplaces, offering promises to transfer the device after receipt rather than hardware in hand.
- Resale asking prices reported by multiple outlets range from roughly $1,600 to $2,899, and some listings are already marked sold, showing some customers are paying steep premiums.
- Valve limited purchases to one unit per household, required a Steam account in good standing with a prior purchase, and used a randomized reservation queue to deter bots and bulk buyers, but those steps have not stopped resale of tradable slots.
- Valve is processing its reservation queue and said cancellations may move other customers into purchase windows, which could let some buyers obtain machines without paying reseller markups.
- The supply squeeze stems from shortages of RAM and NVMe SSDs tied to AI and data‑center demand, and the result may shape short‑term access, buyer risk from advance‑sale scams, and how Valve manages future hardware launches.