Sell GPUs like Steamdeck - limit scalping and AI gobbling

[Cray]

Buy graphics cards in bulk and offer 1-2 per steam account over a certain age and level. This won't solve scalping and the market constraints, but it could reduce the problem for those of us just wanting to buy a good card.

Now let me preemptively deal with the mandatory flood of naysayers, pessimists and people with nothing better to do than shooting down every idea they see to feel better about themselves instead of having an actual discussion:

Of course this is far fetched. Of course it wouldn't be easy. Of course it would be expensive. Of course the problem is bigger, more complicated, and can't be solved by this alone. Of course it's almost guaranteed they can't pull this off, or are even interested in dealing with it.

..but wouldn't you like to buy a good graphics card without breaking the bank? Don't you want to be able to afford maxed settings without spending half a year's worth of savings? Do you want to delegate all rendering to some cloud service with subpar security, privacy and latency?

We do need something, because the fact that I can sell a 10 year old, used card for over the price I bought it for in 2014 says a lot about what's happened.

So, just an idea, I'm sure someone somewhere has an even better solution. Lofty thought, but give it some thought :)

ps: valve, if you by any chance pulled this off, I demand a place in line to buy <3

[KalGimpa]

i am curious why you think it would be any cheaper than anywhere else?

i have no problem with steam becoming a seller of cards

but valve is only going to do this if they make money

[Piston Smashed™]

So, you want Valve to buy up graphics cards and then sell them cheaper to those people who can't afford the going price of graphic cards? I'm flummoxed as to why no one else has come out with such a brilliant idea...

If you're paying over the odds for ten year old graphic cards then that's a you problem. Why not just save your money and wait a bit longer until you can buy something more inline with today's tech, you know how most people do things when they can't afford anything right now.

[Tito Shivan]

Valve's Merchandise, the Steam Deck and Index sales kind of show physical sales are not their forte. I'm not sure they'd be prepared for selling GPUs at a large scale.

[Brian9824]

Why would valve take a loss on this? They aren't going to get any real discounts and the costs to do this would have to be passed onto the consumer.

[Gwarsbane]

Hardware companies already have very slim profits, for Valve to get in on something like that, from scratch would be money losing. And when I say slim, I mean slim.... 1 to 2 percent per card.

Just to start to get into something like this would mean they would have to spend billions to setup everything just to start making them. They also have to make the software for it and the firmware too. It would also take them 4 to 5 years to get something like this up and running and they will be restricted to the same limited number of GPUs chips that everyone else is. So really no more GPUs will be made as Intel, AMD and Nvidia are already pumping out as much as they can, which is as much as the FABs can push out which is the limiting factor.

At just 1 to 2 percent profit per card (if they get that much) would take them decades to pay off the creation of the hardware to make the cards themselves.

For the GPU makers to make a card they have to buy a GPU chip off of the company that makes them. Its the prices that Nvidia and AMD and Intel sell those chips at that sets the price of the actual cards. There is a reason why the price of GPUs is very similar in price no matter the maker. They don't set the prices, the chip designers do.

We've already seen one GPU company stop making GPUs because they have deemed it not worth the losses they were taking to make them and sell them for the very minimal profit they were getting but they also had to deal with going up against the chip maker itself (nvidia) who was making cards and making a much larger profit then all the other card makers. Then they have to deal with returns and RMAs and stock not selling and storage and stuff like that.

Look up the reasons why MSI stopped making video cards.



Also your idea of limiting to just certain aged accounts does nothing really. There are over 1 billion accounts in total. Even if you limit it to 15 to 20 year old accounts, thats millions of accounts, they will not be able to produce millions of cards because as mentioned they are limited by the supply of chips themselves and there are many other graphic card makers all around the world that we do not see.


What you want would not actually solve anything. The price would still be set by the chip designers and would still have to be sold for the prices all the other cards are set for. So no they would not be cheaper, no they would not be better. In fact they would more then likely be more expensive because Valve would be dealing with limited amounts of cards being shipped out by them to people.

There is a reason why the index is expensive. Valve has already said it was painful to make the Deck as cheap as it is, they make almost no profit on it and can only ship out a limited number.

[Start_Running]

Cray の投稿を引用：

Buy graphics cards in bulk and offer 1-2 per steam account over a certain age and level. This won't solve scalping and the market constraints, but it could reduce the problem for those of us just wanting to buy a good card.

WHy?
I mean its not like you're going to be paying any less for them

Cray の投稿を引用：

Now let me preemptively deal with the mandatory flood of naysayers, pessimists and people with nothing better to do than shooting down every idea they see to feel better about themselves instead of having an actual discussion:

If you don't like people critiquing your ideas, either make them better.. or keep them to yourself.

Cray の投稿を引用：

Of course this is far fetched. Of course it wouldn't be easy. Of course it would be expensive. Of course the problem is bigger, more complicated, and can't be solved by this alone. Of course it's almost guaranteed they can't pull this off, or are even interested in dealing with it.

The bigger problem is. That even where it might be possible...or feasible. The end result is not going to be any better for us than the current scenario.

Cray の投稿を引用：

..but wouldn't you like to buy a good graphics card without breaking the bank? Don't you want to be able to afford maxed settings without spending half a year's worth of savings? Do you want to delegate all rendering to some cloud service with subpar security, privacy and latency?

I'd also like to own a ferrari but you know...
And again its not like steam doing this is going to make things any better.
It'd likely make things worse.

Cray の投稿を引用：

We do need something, because the fact that I can sell a 10 year old, used card for over the price I bought it for in 2014 says a lot about what's happened.

YEah. But that more sopeaks to how good the cards were back then..
What happened is that crypto miners started buying them up and spiking the demand for the items. ANd thusly stores and manufacturers upped the prices.

The crypto fad has died down a good deal but the thing is those manufacturers.. they ain't in any hurry or mind to drop their prices accordingly because they'vemade all sorts of projectiosn and plans based on them

An if you have something like Valve buying them up in bulk.. thats just gonna icrease the scarcity and the price....I mean Valve's gonna want to sell those puppies at a profit and like any business they are gonna wanna maximize them profits.

So all you'd have is... well...just what amounts to another scalper gobbling up the supply.
See what I mean about thinking things through?

me. My solution is just to turn down the graphics settings a little..

[Cray]

KalCuey の投稿を引用：

i am curious why you think it would be any cheaper than anywhere else?

i have no problem with steam becoming a seller of cards

but valve is only going to do this if they make money

It wouldn't be cheaper. I mean in theory it could if they buy in bulk.

It's just that the whole AI boom has not only sent prices skyrocketing, but also driven availability way down for normal users.

And then scalpers come on top of that again, gobbling up cards and reselling them at a markup.

[Cray]

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

Why would valve take a loss on this? They aren't going to get any real discounts and the costs to do this would have to be passed onto the consumer.

Never suggested they should take a loss. They run a business, they should profit.

More than anything I'm spitballing ideas for how we can avoid everything good being bought up by the AI industry and the remains being heavily tagged by scalpers.

Consider it a way of engendering discussion, if you will.

[nullable]

I like how OP knows all the arguments against, knows it's not reasonable or workable, but is so attached to the fantasy of some path to get GPU's on their terms they're willing to ignore it.

Sorry man, hardware is expensive. Either save your pennies or find a cheaper hobby. How it used to be is in the past, and while you may just be coming to terms with it: Surprise things change.

[Brian9824]

Cray の投稿を引用：

brian9824 の投稿を引用：

Why would valve take a loss on this? They aren't going to get any real discounts and the costs to do this would have to be passed onto the consumer.

Never suggested they should take a loss. They run a business, they should profit.

More than anything I'm spitballing ideas for how we can avoid everything good being bought up by the AI industry and the remains being heavily tagged by scalpers.

Consider it a way of engendering discussion, if you will.

You'd be paying exponentially more for the cards, and your idea would make prices skyrocket. The cards aren't that hard to get anymore either. What card are you trying to buy that you can't find?

Also in case you forgot

Cray の投稿を引用：

..but wouldn't you like to buy a good graphics card without breaking the bank? Don't you want to be able to afford maxed settings without spending half a year's worth of savings?

As stated your idea would do the opposite and make you spend more, not less.

[Start_Running]

Cray の投稿を引用：

KalCuey の投稿を引用：

i am curious why you think it would be any cheaper than anywhere else?

i have no problem with steam becoming a seller of cards

but valve is only going to do this if they make money

It wouldn't be cheaper. I mean in theory it could if they buy in bulk.

It's just that the whole AI boom has not only sent prices skyrocketing, but also driven availability way down for normal users.

And then scalpers come on top of that again, gobbling up cards and reselling them at a markup.

Buying in bulk assumes rthat there is a 'biulk' to buy.
And it only affects what they pay for it. Not what they sell it for.

[KalGimpa]

Cray の投稿を引用：

KalCuey の投稿を引用：

i am curious why you think it would be any cheaper than anywhere else?

i have no problem with steam becoming a seller of cards

but valve is only going to do this if they make money

It wouldn't be cheaper. I mean in theory it could if they buy in bulk.

It's just that the whole AI boom has not only sent prices skyrocketing, but also driven availability way down for normal users.

And then scalpers come on top of that again, gobbling up cards and reselling them at a markup.

our best bet there is going to be companies making ai specific cards

like they did at the height of the crypto craze

those using them for ai will not stop as long as these are the best producers

[Boblin the Goblin]

KalCuey の投稿を引用：

Cray の投稿を引用：

It wouldn't be cheaper. I mean in theory it could if they buy in bulk.

It's just that the whole AI boom has not only sent prices skyrocketing, but also driven availability way down for normal users.

And then scalpers come on top of that again, gobbling up cards and reselling them at a markup.

our best bet there is going to be companies making ai specific cards

like they did at the height of the crypto craze

those using them for ai will not stop as long as these are the best producers

Some companies did.

They made cards without a video output specifically for mining. Crypto miners mostly ignores them and still bought the more easily available cards.

[Gwarsbane]

Wait... you don't mean setup their own card making factory to make them cheaper... you mean buy the cards off of the other makers and sell them for a better price....

Now you're just dreaming cause the cards would never be cheaper. At best they would be the same price, at worse they would be far more expensive.

Again the GPU card makers are only making 1% to 2% on every single card. They can't sell them to Valve for cheaper to make a profit. They would lose money.

Then Valve would have to deal with shipping, lost/stolen cards, returns and all those things that cost them lots of money.

Also the card companies would sell them where they could make the most money, meaning if an AI company offers 10% more then the price, they will sell them to that company. They will limit the number they sell to that company but that also lowers the over all pool of cards that Valve can buy from.

The GPU card makers can only make so many cards because there are only so many chips and they can only pump out the cards so fast too.


Again look up the reasons why MSI stopped making and selling GPUs and that will show you why what you think will happen, won't.

[KalGimpa]

SlowMango の投稿を引用：

KalCuey の投稿を引用：

our best bet there is going to be companies making ai specific cards

like they did at the height of the crypto craze

those using them for ai will not stop as long as these are the best producers

Some companies did.

They made cards without a video output specifically for mining. Crypto miners mostly ignores them and still bought the more easily available cards.

yeah

it was great that they tried with those

i think it was more the wrong market for them

ai is not going anywhere and not as volatile as crypto

if they start making those again for ai use we could get a bit of relief