But when you purchase a large number of them and sell them off one at a time, you're generating an artificial shortage

I doubt that anybody has purchased more than 10 units for resale. That's 10 units out of 3000, or about 1/3 of 1 percent of the total number of players. It would be pretty hard to generate an "artificial shortage" on that basis.

And even if somebody had managed to corner every single empeg for sale in the known universe, I wouldn't fault him for marketing them in such a fashion as to maximize the return on his investment. In actuality, there are a number of different people selling empegs, and the market has spoken: a 10GB empeg is worth about $500.

Why anyone thinks that selling a product for what the market is willing to pay is unethical is beyond me.

tanstaafl.