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The Steam Machine is actually a great prospect — we're just looking at it wrong
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this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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Then the same thing would occur—buyers not interested in using Steam would sell the vouchers or the accounts those vouchers are tied to.
Little late reply here... It just occured to me, that there could be a solution to this voucher selling problem. If you purchase the Steam Machine on the Steam page with your Steam account, then you could get the money onto your account. So selling it wouldn't be possible. However, they could buy and sell items from the Steam item shop...
The problem with that solution, from Valve's perspective, is both the cost of providing the voucher (they would have to pay developers at least 70% of the voucher value) and the risk that an end-consumer that doesn't intend to use Steam simply converts it to money by selling Steam gifts, replacing a sale they would have otherwise had while not generating additional sales from the Steam Machine user.
The ideal means of doing it to diminish that risk would be to make the voucher not usable for gifts, though Valve would still need to price the system to account for the cost of providing the voucher.
But that is still preferable over no vouchers. The point is, that the machine gets more expensive because of the vouchers, so that Valve does not pay from their own pocket. This way the system gets more expensive for those who don't want to use it for gaming and have less incentive of buying it. And for the gamer, they would buy games anyway, so its not a big deal.
The only problem with that is, that the system gets more expensive and that is bad.
And? The problem is steam not being able to sell the console at a loss. The hypothetical call centre is welcome to sell the vouchers. They've still paid full price for the machine. This makes it a much more enticing prospect for people that actually want to game on it though, and so long as the bundled voucher eventually gets used, why would it matter that it's not the person that bought the hardware?
ETA: Also, if the voucher doesn't get used at all, Valve win entirely
Because Valve would have to pay out 70% the value of the vouchers to developers in game redemptions; the break even point would therefore need to account for that amount being subtracted first (i.e. for $900 including a $200 voucher, $760).
At that point, Valve would likely have higher sales if they didn't include the voucher and reduced the price by the 70% in voucher value it would have cost them otherwise.
Yes, they would.
This is about competing in the console space though, where eating some of the cost of the hardware is a common practice on the gamble that the more consoles you sell, the more you make in game sales.
The problem for Valve is that they're selling something that could be used as a general computing device which means that there's no guarantee that they'd recoup the cost in game sales.
This is a sort of middle ground. I understand what I think you're saying, that if someone buys the console, and sells the voucher, Valve only stand to recoup $60 with no further game sales...
But on the flip side, that's a lot of extra bs for a call centre IT department to have go through to list and sell a hundred plus vouchers, if they even manage to sell them. It could happen, but it's far less appealing than a nice cheap workstation for $700. Any they can't sell before the vouchers expire is a machine they've paid full price for. It makes it a much riskier and more burdensome prospect.
On the consumer side, someone weighing up a $500 playstation and a $900 steam machine is more likely to seriously consider the steam machine if they get $200 of that back in games
The Index came with a free copy of Alyx
Beyond initial development costs, it didn't cost Valve anything to ship the Index with Alyx though. Bundling in a $200 voucher would be increasing the system price by $160 in direct cost to Valve for no reason, as consumers are likely to spend that after purchasing the system, but might be dissuaded by a high initial purchase price.
A more apt comparison in that scenario would be Valve bundling their entire software library with the Steam Machine, or developing a new game to bundle with it as a means of adding value.