> bizarrely unwilling to adjust their pricing based on market conditions.

When they do this, customers have a conniption.

This works fine for luxury goods, because the whole point is that they are expensive, thus exclusive (see: Porsche, Rolex). But for regular goods, this ends up being penny wise, pound foolish. Yeah, there's a short-term bump in revenues and profits, but it gives competition a massive attack surface, as they can pull away the most loyal customers who are angry over price gouging, and those customers are probably lost forever.

It's not that bizarre. Not everyone is trying to optimize for maximum profit. Some creators or companies want to build a community by increasing the consumer surplus received by their buyers. They are willing to trade profit for that. Scalpers slip into the middle, take the surplus for themselves, and prevent the community building or other social goods that the seller is trying to create.

Valve is where they are at because Gabe knows he is rich enough and doesn't need to squeeze every penny out of their customers' pocket, nor is there any investors making him do so. Maximizing the price of the steam machine which is already going way above the anticipated price due to component prices skyrocketing will be perceived as a giant fuck you move and burn years of goodwill, erasing a major competitive advantage valve holds over other game storefronts.

The outcome is that only people with the means to pay a lot get a product, so the optics are extremely bad. The optics are much better with a lottery system, as it trades wealth disparity determination for a dumb luck determination.

I don't think we "need" scalpers though, but they are a fundamental part of markets, and arise when you are trying to break the natural flow of markets. Scalpers are the markets punishment for trying to have your cake and eat it too.

We do not, in fact, "need scalpers". They don't provide value to anyone except themselves.