A UK-based company that specialises in using bots to acquire highly sought-after PS5 consoles has claimed to have secured over 2000 units from UK retailer GAME.
This week retailer GAME received a new stock of PS5 consoles, and if you wanted to pick one up, you’d have to wait in an online queue for about an hour.
However, a company which uses bots to jump online queues and make transactions within mere seconds has boasted on social media that it acquired over 2000 PS5 consoles, presumably to sell on at a profit.
As a result, GAME’s PS5 allocation sold out quickly, likely before genuine customers even stood any chance of acquiring the new-gen console.
The boastful company was brought to GAME’s attention by a Twitter account set up to let followers know when new-gen consoles are made available to order.
“Any chance of stopping this soon?” reads a tweet from UKPS5Notify.
GAME did respond to the tweets, but rather than addressing the issue, the company apparently blocked the Twitter page asking the very reasonable question.
However GAME has responded in a statement provided to VGC. The retailer claims that they will be investigating the issue to make sure that only one PS5 console is sold per customer.
A spokesperson said: “PlayStation 5’s continue to be in very high demand and that demand far outweighs current supply. We have strong measures in place to help ensure that our ‘1 per customer’ statement is maintained to allow for as many individual customers to successfully purchase as possible.”
The statement continued: “All pre-orders are subject to automatic checks and order updates such as cancellations following these checks take place after a customer will have received a valid order confirmation email. At the present time these orders are still pre-orders and as such no payments have yet been taken from customers. Payments will commence once our order checks have been completed.”
In my humble opinion it’s all well and good GAME (and other retailers) saying that only one PS5 console can be sold per customer, but how will that be enforced?
I’m far from an expert as to how these bots work, but I would assume that these companies have already prepared for the “one per customer” rule.
I’d also assume that these bot companies have ensured that any bot making the purchase is already “one per account.” If not, they soon will be.
A friend of mine couldn’t have put it any better. Bot companies and profiteers have “completely destroys the spirit of gaming and the excitement of launches”.
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