I hate having to prove my brand loyalty just for the chance to buy hardware at full price

Nobody likes scalpers, man—it's already hard enough to get the latest and greatest hardware, let alone with some enterprising bad actor and their bots buying up all the available stock, and then charging an even greater fortune for sought-after bits of kit. That said, I'm not really a big fan of the anti-scalper measures many vendors are now deploying either.

For instance, Sony Japan has rolled out an anti-scalper lottery system for PS5 Pro orders. To be in with even a chance of picking up the pricey console, you'll need a Sony account registered in Japan that has logged at least 60 hours or more of gaming, either on a PS4, a PS5, or both (via Tom's Hardware). In theory, that should be enough of a faff to deter scalpers and an easy enough hurdle for PlayStation fans to overcome. In practice, I'm not loving the weird precedent of locking my potential hardware purchases behind a dystopian brand loyalty test.

Obviously, it's not just Sony that's up to such silliness. Most recently, Valve implemented a reservation system for the launch of the Steam Frame. To sign up, the FAQ says, "You must have a Steam account in good standing," and that "You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026."

To be fair to Valve, I did see reports of the Steam Machine being scalped for over $3,000. But 'In good standing'? What does that even mean? I couldn't find a precise definition from Valve itself; an account 'in good standing' could mean one not subject to a ban or any community restrictions, or it could mean an account that has made a purchase within a recent timeframe, or it could mean whatever suits Valve at any given moment. I'm still a little unclear on this finer point.

I've already written about how it's been genuinely cheaper for me to fly internationally to either QuakeCon or PAX West earlier this year, and pick up an RTX 5090 for MSRP at either of those in-person events. The latter scheme was described as 'Verified Priority Access IRL'. For those who don't recall, VPA was the draw system Nvidia used to offer the chance to pay full price for RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 Founders Edition graphics cards last year (Newegg's Shuffle lottery system also did a similar thing).

Zotac even attempted to beat those dastardly GPU scalpers by selling RTX 50-series graphics cards to actual gamers via Discord last year. And like Nvidia, Zotac likely knew it could sell every card it offered up through such a direct (not to mention exclusive) channel.

I hate this trend, even if it is all meant to deter scalpers. I firmly believe gaming, and PC gaming especially, should be for everyone, though I'll acknowledge it rarely lives up to that ideal. Brand loyalty tests like this, plus the runaway pricing caused by the ongoing memory supply crisis, mean those without deep reserves of both cash and time are still stuck on the outside looking in. Bottom line, though scalpers may be mostly closed out of the loop by reservation systems with set qualifying criteria, I'm not convinced this is the best deal for hardware consumers.

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