


For some, an error appeared saying their Steam account was “too new” to be eligible to place a pre-order Friday morning, even though they had been Steam users for years.

But by 10:15am, all three PCMag staffers had successfully placed a pre-order. Meanwhile, Valve’s check out system initially struggled to process our credit card information. The main site for Steam Deck did crash after the pre-orders opened at 10am PST. The experience certainly wasn’t free of hiccups. That’s because three PCMag staffers successfully placed pre-orders for a Steam Deck Friday morning in what felt like a miracle, given the past terrible launches for the latest PC graphics cards. We suspect the system did help consumers reserve the product. As a result, scalpers were essentially blocked from creating batches of fake Steam accounts to secure multiple pre-orders. In addition, each Steam account was limited to only one pre-order, which cost $5 to place. To place a pre-order on Friday, you had to have owned a Steam account that made a purchase prior to June 2021. But in some good news, Valve seems to have come up with effective safeguards to prevent online scalpers from crashing the party. The initial batch of pre-orders for the Steam Deck did sell out quickly on Friday morning, which may make the product hard to come by once it ships in December. “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR MAN?!?! PAPA'S GOTTA EAT,” wrote one scalper, who’s trying to sell his Steam Deck pre-order for $5,000 to someone’s who “filthy rich.” But some scalpers are betting desperate consumers will pay more. The eBay listings for the Steam Deck began to trickle in shortly after pre-orders for the handheld gaming PC kicked off on Friday morning. As expected, scalpers are already trying to profit off of the Steam Deck by selling confirmed pre-orders for the device from $1,000 to as much as $4,100.
