GPUs like the Nvidia RTX 3080 suffered from availability at launch with scalpers snapping them up left, right, and centre, but Valve doesn’t want its recently announced Steam Deck to go down the same route. It's a tough nut to crack, but the reservation system put in place by the company means the new handheld gaming PC might not suffer from the same stock issues as the best graphics card.
Valve says it put the system in place to "ensure an orderly and fair ordering process for customers". Scalpers won't be able to just create brand-new Steam accounts to make reservations, as you'll only be able to purchase a single Steam Deck through an already-existing account. It just needs to be in "good standing", and have made a purchase through the platform prior to June 2021.
These rules only apply for the first 48 hours of reservations, however. Presumably after this point, any newly created Steam account will be able to make a reservation, and it's not known how long this stage of reservations will run for.
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