Steam Frame Reservations Are on eBay for Up to $2,000, and Valve's Terms Void Any That Change Hands

$1,750 for the 256GB kit. $2,000 or more for the 1TB. Those are the eBay asking prices PC Guide found for Steam Frame reservations, listed within hours of Valve telling buyers on Thursday, September 17, whether they had one. Valve's own prices are $1,059 and $1,299. That is a 65 percent markup on the smaller kit and 54 percent on the larger one.

Nobody in those listings is holding a headset. Mixed, which reported on the same listings, put it plainly: these are asking prices, not sales, and no Western buyer has a Frame yet. What a reservation actually is comes from Valve's September 14 announcement. The model has been "reserved in your name." When a unit is ready to ship, Valve emails the account holder a purchase link. The first of those went out Friday. Each one expires after 72 hours.

What Valve's terms say

The Steam Frame Limited Drop Program Terms cover this in one sentence: "The right to purchase the Product has no cash value and cannot be substituted, transferred, assigned, bartered, or auctioned, and any attempt to take such actions will result in opportunity being void."

Two more clauses back it up. A purchase link is void if it was "not obtained from authorized and legitimate channels." And anyone who abuses the program "will be disqualified from the right to purchase the Product." Eligibility is tied to "the registered account holder" of a Steam account with a purchase before April 27, 2026, at one signup per household, as Nina's sign-up guide laid out on launch day.

That leaves a buyer two outcomes. Pay for a link, and the link is void under Valve's terms. Pay a seller to check out on their own account and reship the headset, and the buyer is trusting a stranger to complete a purchase the terms forbid, then ship it whenever the unit arrives. Neither comes with a Valve receipt in the buyer's name.

Built to stop exactly this

Valve chose the reservation system on purpose. The September 14 post says it was carried over from the Steam Machine launch because it proved "helpful in improving the purchase experience and limiting resellers."

The Steam Controller shows the alternative. It launched in May with no queue, sold out in under an hour at $99, and hit eBay at $150 to $250 within the first hour. It is still being flipped. UploadVR found controller listings as high as $300 this week, with some buyers told by Valve they are waitlisted into 2027.

The Frame system did change what is for sale. The first wave was edited screenshots of reservation emails, which the Friday roundup covered. Listings for the reservations themselves followed within hours. Valve built a lottery to keep resellers out, and within a day the resellers were selling lottery tickets.

eBay is removing some of them. PC Guide reports that the marketplace's policies restrict the sale of queue spots and digital reservations, and that users who reported Frame listings saw them pulled as an "Intangible item." Neither Valve nor eBay has commented publicly. Valve's Steam Hardware feed has not mentioned resellers since the September 14 post.

The second scam comes with the box

European buyers have a separate problem, and it starts when units ship. Between July 29 and August 1, attackers breached CEVA Logistics, which Valve's customer notice describes as "the company that ships Steam hardware to customers in Europe." Valve learned of it on August 7. According to the notice, as published by BleepingComputer, the exposed data covered names, addresses, phone numbers, Steam account email addresses, and the type and price of hardware ordered. CEVA keeps that data for up to 90 days after an order. Payment details, passwords and Steam Guard codes were not involved.

The breach predates Frame orders. The warning in that notice still fits anyone waiting on a Frame delivery: "They may quote your address back to you to prove they're genuine. They may ask you to confirm a delivery, pay a small customs or redelivery fee, or sign in somewhere to 'verify' your order. Treat all of them as fake." Valve has not said whether CEVA handles European Frame shipments.

The math for a waitlisted buyer

Valve's 256GB kit costs $1,059. A reseller asking $1,750 wants $691 more than Valve does, for a right to buy that Valve's terms void the moment it changes hands. The waitlist costs time. It does not cost money.

For buyers in the queue, the purchase link comes by email to the account that signed up, and it lasts 72 hours. Anything else that asks for a fee, a sign-in, or an address confirmation gets Valve's own treatment. Assume it is fake.