Bots driving up exalt prices is one thing, but ffs PS5's and 3080's?

Never in my life have I been willing to give a company hundreds to thousands of dollars for their product, only to unable to do so because of bots, unemployed scalpers, Ebay scammers, and crooked Amazon drivers.

I was hopeful I'd be able to play Cyberpunk on a PS5 on its release day, but that's a pipedream now.

What a time to be alive.

I am glad this scalper-thing is not YET a european thing... Well at least if you forget DDV. Then again I prefer getting screwed by a state who provide me with health care and working trains than by wannabee gangsters .

Letter just came in, i can get coronamoney now because i have trees.

100bucks pro hectare if i do the paperwork, that equals to 1 free tree per 10000.
I´m not intelligent enough to find a correlation, but i guess the money-printing business got hit the hardest.
I´m knocking on wood and wish all affected a fast re...growth?

The 3080 is sooooo good though. I play everything on ultra and the card is not even impressed. Can't wait to do the same with Cyberpunk!

This is the "Gold Seller" market... in real life.

Back in the day, a "subscription-based" MMO didn't care about bots and "gold sellers" at all. As in "Didn't see it, didn't happen" level of care. But, why? Well, the publisher still got their subscription fees every month and if they had to ban a few for "botting" or "RMT" then... even better - They'd probably get an extra month out of that account's re-up. Only when it was an egregious, high-profile, violation did they ever truly "care." (Another reason - It generally enabled end-game players to stay playing end-game and having fun rather than "farming" all day...)

Turn off the PC, turn on reality and now we see Walmart and Amazon and Best Buy "not caring" about having their retail sites virtually raped by bots and having their inventory go flying out the warehouse door.

They. Don't. Care.

In fact, they get rewarded for not caring...

And, with megalopolies like Amazon, they could give two wet squirts about their "customer base." Where are they going to go? With a "Prime" membership, they'll be bottle-feeding their grandkids by buying "Amazon's Great Value" baby formulae.

When does it stop?

Well, it doesn't stop as long as regular customers keep giving these places money.

It "could" stop if they had repercussions for bad behavior, like a sudden giant mob of asshats throwing poo at the logo sign at the corporate headquaters...


The console maker's themselves would really have to be the ones to solve this problem. To do that, they'd have to ensure a seller receiving xx_quantity of their product has "bot protection" means in place and, further, demonstrate that those actually function. Setting aside a number of these high demand items solely for distribution through small retail businesses would be good, too. If there were any "small retail businesses" anymore, that is...

I don't care about being the first on my block to own yet another intrusion into my living room. I have both of the last generation of consoles from those mfrs and am in no rush to "upgrade."