It was better than clicking “Next” every second for 45 minutes trying to check out, and then failing to get one. Nothing can truly stop scalpers except the original seller doing the scalping themselves with a reverse auction.
What I mean
I’m not suggesting this is a good system. Hence I’m hiding it in a spoiler. Imagine if Valve launched the sale, and priced the machine at like $2100 (base model), and that started ticking down. Well, the rich idiots who just have to have one buy it for that price, and more normal people buy it after it drops a lot. No scalper can profit if all the rich idiots already got theirs directly from Valve. Instead, Valve profits, which you could argue is better.