As expected – despite Valve's efforts – scalpers swooped in and grabbed Steam Deck pre-orders by the truckload before dumping them onto eBay. However, the online store platform isn't letting it slide.
These sales far exceeded the retail price of the Steam Deck, often being sold upward of £1,000. However, eBay is removing these from its storefront due to it breaching its presale policy.
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For context, on eBay, you have to ensure that, when selling presale listings, that you can deliver the item within 30 days. The Steam Deck isn't out in the next month – it's out in December and that's the earliest.
"As the Steam Deck is not expected to ship until next year, these listings are in violation of our presale policy," eBay told Eurogamer, "We are working to remove all listings of the product."
Typically, eBay relies on its block filter algorithms to sus out keywords and prevent sellers from putting forward items like the Steam Deck. However, in this case – as is often the case – scalpers found a way around the system to get the Steam Deck up for extortionate prices.
With that said, eBay has stated that if sellers put something on the site that breaches its rules, it may go as far as to ban the seller themselves rather than just removing the item they were selling.
Various scalpers also had potentially misleading listings, stating that the Steam Deck would ship in December. Valve's expected availability is actually in Q2 2022.
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