News GPU Bot Battle: Average Gamers Turn to Bots to Score an RTX 3080

[geogan]

I am the only one running the script and as such only one request from me every 2 minutes shouldn't bring down any server. In contrast scalpers run their scripts in a loop usually every second.

Every second?? That is crazy. That is continuously hammering the web server and slowing it down for everyone else - especially if the script is stupid and requests the entire page and everything on it (html, css, js files) every time. That could be 20-30 requests and maybe 1-2Mb of files every time.

Even every 2 minutes is too much IMO.

I have monitoring set up on a few sites, but I have set it randomly to between 35 minute and 1 hour between polling as interval.

 

[Endymio]

That is the only working way... nobody buy scalpers... but too Many people Are willing to pay above msrp

Only when the manufacturer sets the MSRP too low, as here, which is a very temporary, short-term case.

what needs to be done is that law should be passed to make is illegal...

Price is the mechanism by which supply and demand equalize. Government intervention in that mechanism always cause long-term harm. Simply because you want a new video card and you want it NOW! is no reason to restrict the freedom of others.

Laws like this not only cause general harm, but also have unintended side-effects. For instance, a friend of mine recently sold his 60's-era Corvette for at least twenty times the original MSRP. Under your law, that would be illegal. What about a case where the manufacturer sells a product, then sets a new, lower MSRP. Should existing owners not be able to sell for what they paid? You start considering all possible situations and contingencies, and you wind up with a convoluted legal code so complex that few can understand it -- and those that do, exploit it.

 

[geogan]

I am seeing on my notifications when various websites are slowly inscreasing the pre-order prices of various 3080 cards... especially ones which seem to be popular among the youtube reviewers now (ASUS TUF just went up 30GBP for no good reason)
They seem to be able to charge what they want. Profiteering you could call it. Could also say if 1000 people want the TUF and they know they are only getting 20 of them, then they should be able to charge way higher because most likely 20 out of those 1000 people will still pay it.

 

[Wolfshadw]

I am seeing on my notifications when various websites are slowly inscreasing the pre-order prices of various 3080 cards... especially ones which seem to be popular among the youtube reviewers now (ASUS TUF just went up 30GBP for no good reason)
They seem to be able to charge what they want. Profiteering you could call it. Could also say if 1000 people want the TUF and they know they are only getting 20 of them, then they should be able to charge way higher because most likely 20 out of those 1000 people will still pay it.

Doesn't work that way. If you have a confirmed pre-order at a specific price, the seller has to honor that.

I think what you're seeing is that the company knows they're getting 1000 units, but they'll only have 100 units this week, 200 units the following week, and so on. The company will open pre-orders based on the 1000 they know they're getting, but if the first 50 sell out quickly at the base price, there is nothing that stops them from raising the price on the second 50 of the 100 they get this week and raising it again for the 200 they get next week.

But they MUST honor those first 50 at the prices they were listed at.

-Wolf sends

 

[Rodrigodrt]

Maybe add some messed up captchas to the buy button lol.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Let's try to stay on topic and within the Terms of Use, please.
Feel free to continue your discussion privately through Private Messaging, but it's not allowed in the public forums.

Thank you,
Wolfshadw
Moderator

 

[Avro Arrow]

That is the only working way... nobody buy scalpers and so scalpers have an inventory of GPUs that he has to sell below msrp... but too Many people Are willing to pay above msrp, so this is just as good as peoples willingness to not to buy...

It's the unfortunate truth that stupid people ruin the world.

 

[Reanor]

"Surprisingly", the GTX 3080 FEs on Nvidia website haven't restocked even once, since they got released a week ago. Just a paper release to create hype ahead of Big Navi from AMD reveal in October. Purposeful scarcity to increase the 'street price' and marginalize ridiculous price for GTX 3090, which is only 10% faster... Usually $1500, would be the base price for Titan version, now they can sell new RTX Titan for over $3000, and do significant bump for 3070, 3060. RTX 2080Ti was only $300 more expensive that 2080... RTX 3090 is not even in a Ti ballpark... Just sad... NVIDIA is changing.

 

[fenns_treasure]

what needs to be done is that law should be passed to make is illegal to sell new items such as new graphics cards, cup's etc, above the max price stated in the original retailer site. when that is in place selling to high prices at sites like ebay become illegal' and in turn those sites will also put a ban on those products. so that will get rid of these scalpers for good. i personally trolled some of the listings in the ebay by putting bids so that the price goes high where no one will be paying that amount to get a new RTX card. sometimes you do need to fight fire with fire.

This is a good idea. Make a bot that bids up the price on ebay to something that ruins there attempts to sell them.

Of course ebay, Amazon, etc could refuse to allow re-sellers to mark up brand new comp components, but I don't see them caring enough to help out.

 

[Wolfshadw]

This is not a huge surprise as most of the gamers were expecting this sooner or later. Bots have almost taken over many of the previous version games that used to be trending, it's the only way to keep humans engaged. It's not like bots are just only a part of the recent gaming strategy, Nvidia had already included chatbot development services into their existing strategy to keep the game interactive and provide an immersive experience. Hopefully, in the coming years, they adopt more artificially intelligent NPC bots than the dull ones we see nowadays. I'm talking more like Westworld lol

Thread is almost a year old and I think you missed the point.
Some gamers have taken to using bots, not in games, but to quickly add a limited graphic card supply to their carts for purchase. A bot can do this much faster than a human can. For those of us who choose not to use bots, we're pretty much out of luck if we want a new graphics card (or we need to pay a ridiculous about). Some sellers have taken some steps to limit or eliminate this practice, but I think it's still prevalent.

-Wolf sends