Second best would be manufacturers auctioning off their early delivery themselves and selling units for the regular price to confirmed loyal customers.
Steam in particular has some interesting options. They could make it so that, during the first couple of weeks, you need an active Steam account that’s at least a year old to buy a controller, and you get a maximum of two per Steam account.
There’s lots they could do to make sure they are sold to as many legitimate customers as possible.
The question is, how do you manage it without pissing some people off? I dont think the scalpers are that big of a deal, there’s never thousands of them, I bet the percentage of sold controllers going to scalpers is pretty low.
(That would encourage scalpers doing it more often. I don’t think a company should pay scalpers “ransom” like that and reward them. The better option would be try to avoid them.) Edit: Never mind, I misunderstood you.
Oh wait, I totally misunderstood you. Actually that’s not a bad idea to auction it themselves too. I guess the ebay middleman would complicate things further for Valve and even more costly. Maybe for the first 2 weeks or so until enough stock is there.
Second best would be manufacturers auctioning off their early delivery themselves and selling units for the regular price to confirmed loyal customers.
Steam in particular has some interesting options. They could make it so that, during the first couple of weeks, you need an active Steam account that’s at least a year old to buy a controller, and you get a maximum of two per Steam account.
There’s lots they could do to make sure they are sold to as many legitimate customers as possible.
The question is, how do you manage it without pissing some people off? I dont think the scalpers are that big of a deal, there’s never thousands of them, I bet the percentage of sold controllers going to scalpers is pretty low.
(That would encourage scalpers doing it more often. I don’t think a company should pay scalpers “ransom” like that and reward them. The better option would be try to avoid them.)Edit: Never mind, I misunderstood you.How does it encourage scalpers? Buyers will outbid scalpers because scalpers need to make a profit.
Oh wait, I totally misunderstood you. Actually that’s not a bad idea to auction it themselves too. I guess the ebay middleman would complicate things further for Valve and even more costly. Maybe for the first 2 weeks or so until enough stock is there.