But it's not an additional Steam Machine, it's a potential additional Steam Machine. In expectation, I'm sure it's more like 1/1000th of a Steam Machine.

I'll be intrigued to see if this is true. The experience of the Steam Controller may not translate to the Steam Machine. The Steam Controller is a unique controller. The Steam Frame is a unique VR headset. Obviously not the only thing in their space, but at least a unique combination of features that may make it more valuable than other things in the space.

But the Steam Machine is really just a PC with a couple of neat features. If you are willing to overpay a scalper for a Steam Machine, it seems much more reasonable to suggest that maybe you should just take that same amount of money and buy a machine where that money translates into power rather than scalper profit. After it became clear that the Steam Machine was going to be hit hard by the price increases, I just bought a machine that was pure AMD. Where it is living I don't care if it's a little cube or not, nor do I care about the LED bar, and the integrated puck wasn't a big deal when I just use the current one as a charger too. For just a bit more money than the Steam Machine it's about 50% more powerful on all relevant fronts, and I may upgrade to a 9070XT (current latest-gen AMD card) which isn't an option on the Steam Machine. And since I bought that machine the same machine is now nearly $100 more expensive itself.

Paying a scalper for the controller at least makes some sense. Perhaps the same for the Steam Frame. But of the three things Valve is releasing this year, I'm not sure it makes sense to pay a scalper an extra 50% for a Steam Machine. In that scenario, you're not really paying that extra for the machine as a whole; you're paying extra for those "couple of neat features" alone, the form factor, the integrated controller puck, the LED on the front, whatever else is specifically about the Steam Machine and not a true statement about any machine with SteamOS or Bazzite installed. You need to want one of those things really, really badly to overpay that much. The value proposition is quite different.

Of course, this is a very analytical take on what may be a primary-emotional decision for some people. We'll see.

How are people going to get a Steam account with a purchase from before April 27th though?

I guess you could find somebody online and buy their account, but surely this would be a slow and unreliable process.

sadly there's sites dedicated to buying accounts of all sorts (reddit, x, steam, etc...) that use an escrow-type system so both parties have little risk

It's basically super easy and trivial to buy verified accounts for many many platforms

How can I sell my old accounts?

The trouble is getting caught, and you don't list contact info on your HN profile so any potential buyers would have to leave their email address here and tell you to email them and the people running. Steve are an idiot so any email address that appears there is gonna get blacklisted different connected to a Steam account so you might want to list your email address well throwaway that's not attached to your Steam account account. You might want to list that in your profile. Just saying. I already have a Steam account.

Lolzteam et al still exist. Buying a Steam account is one click or so.

How do they get around restriction on only one entry per address? Open 1000 PO boxes?

When I used to do resale (~2018 - lost my CS job and was interviewing, but had to live between jobs), the easiest one was fake apartment numbers.

Instead of

    123 Main St.

You turn it into

    123 #1 Main St.

or if you live in an apartment variants of this such as

    123 #1 Main St. -> 123 #001 Main St.

This was years ago and I assume the matching work has gotten a lot better though.

I appreciate the legitimate input sans ridicule. One can only hope it's better now

Ok but organizing a separate address for each delivery is going to be a pain