Are hardware IDs reliable at all - I've seen so many companies using HWIDs in their anti-cheats over the years and it has never worked; so I wonder if this would easily be worked around.
It wouldn't be hard, but who would pay scalper prices for something that they then have to run dodgy software on that may or may not jeopardize their entire steam account?
This is a different threat model than anti-cheat. Here you just want it to be annoying enough to stop scalping.
So presumably if you make an account which didn't buy a Steam Machine unable to log in on one, you kill the scalping market. It doesn't have to be perfect to make it unpalatable for scalping. Is a scalper going to take the risk on buying a ton of hardware which they can't offload at a profit without also getting users to hack the thing to get it to work and risk a Steam ban?
it occurs to me that you dont need to even actually do it. just say you will. say you have an ironclad way to lock it down that is baked into the hardware. If the scalpers think they cant actually sell them they wont try to buy them. MOST people will just login with the account that bought it those who dont are probably benign and can be ignored.
And honestly you probably dont want to tempt non-scalpers into being one time scalpers either.
at least for the first round till people figure it out it would totally solve it. people who actually want one get one at msrp.
the downside is you maybe dont get as many early or up front reservations from people who arent sure. but like your whole problem
is more demand than supply so thats not actually an issue. and the people who can buy them for msrp will be really glad you did the thing. so you probably end out ahead on consumer side.
This is a different threat model than anti-cheat. Here you just want it to be annoying enough to stop scalping.