News Zotac is selling RTX 50-series GPUs directly to customers to thwart scalpers

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Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.

Someone like me who has reasonable amount of money might buy a new video card just because I can afford it and not use it to its full potential where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.

The same thing happens in disasters, where the government prevents price raising. I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.

If the price of gasoline had risen to double or triple, I might have thought harder about how much gasoline I truly needed at the moment.
 
A Stoner said:
Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.

Someone like me who has reasonable amount of money might buy a new video card just because I can afford it and not use it to its full potential where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.

The same thing happens in disasters, where the government prevents price raising. I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.

If the price of gasoline had risen to double or triple, I might have thought harder about how much gasoline I truly needed at the moment.
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Or maybe the company supplying the cards can actually launch with proper amounts if inventory instead of just trying to get stuff out there.
 
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Heiro78 said:
Or maybe the company supplying the cards can actually launch with proper amounts if inventory instead of just trying to get stuff out there.
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It is not like they are making more money by failing to meet demand, and it is not like they do not understand what the demand is going to be.

They are restrained by many aspects and those aspects are hard to change. The amount of access to process nodes, how many chips make the cut and so forth. These things are second tier cutting edge technology, with their AI products being first tier cutting edge technology and first tier profit margins. Their first priority is to supply as much AI as they can, because their priority is always investor return on investment.

If they had access to more wafers they would make more wafers, if they had higher success with the wafers, they could sell more devices, but their are constraints and there are competing priorities.

The fact that they are making any consumer grade chips at all when there is still a massive demand for $60,000 AI processors is really about all you can hope for.

They did allow the technology to stagnate though, adding in more AI rather than rasterization and RT power. That is because their current gravy train is the AI. That will change eventually.

Hopefully this gives Intel and AMD a chance to catch up and become true competitors, as competition will eventually cause the leaps in performance and the need to meet customer demands to be required.
 
Thing is though is that even if it were completely fair, say a total random lottery, if you give someone something for $XXX, and they can sell it for double or triple digit profit percentages, there's a good chance they will flip it, be it hardware, event tickets, or whatever, especially if it's something they don't absolutely need.
 
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Yeah, at only 10 available cards this is basically a marketing stunt. This won’t fill any meaningful amount of demand, and banning someone’s Discord username from future drawings is hardly a deterrent to scalping given that accounts are free and easy to make… if you can even catch them at all. Seems like enforcement would depend on Zotac trying to pull serial numbers from the pictures of listings, and if you just don’t show a full serial number (or resell locally through a platform less likely to be checked), I’m not sure how they’d be able to tell.

And even if they could guarantee somehow that they can identify 100% of the people who flip cards after the fact and ban all of their current and future accounts, people will still try to scalp cards because they’re not loyal to Zotac as a brand and don’t care about getting disqualified and/or they figure that statistically they’re not going to be winning multiple Zotac drawings.
 
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Who the hell is actively engaged in Zotac Discord server discussions? With 10 cards, maybe there will be enough for the entire community. Just kidding.

But it's very disgusting what Nvidia has become. They release cards that are barely an updated version of the previous series (with an AI software upgrade), still with premium prices, make sure there's no availability to generate hype and in the meanwhile, stop the production of the 4000 series. Everything to create a fake sentiment of popularity and make the prices skyrocketing. Jensen is a jerk.
 
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Jabberwocky79 said:
I applaud the endeavor, but absolutely no faith that it will be carried out fairly. And the fact that they only have like, ten 5080s available is an absolute joke. This is more of a savvy marketing move than anything.
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As a publicity device this is brilliant, sadly the supply isn’t available for them to do this on a larger scale.
A Stoner said:
Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market
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Scalpers are predatory. They know that they can fleece their prey.
Consider the guy whose kid wants to go to a gig, The dad buys 4 tickets, he is only going to use 2. He sells 2 tickets at more than twice the face value and booking fee effectively going to the gig for free.

Had the dad bought the tickets he used and not sold or the commercial scale scalpers not been able to buy tickets the people the dad sold his “spare” tickets could have bought at the face value + booking fee price.
A family got fleeced.
Pierce2623 said:
It’s crazy how people are mad at Zotac instead of Nvidia that Zotac North America only has access to 10 5080s.
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I think it’s a wonderful gesture, it would be better if when there is supply they can open it up and supply directly as a general practice.
ThijsL202 said:
According to Zotac’s rules, you must be a Zotac Gaming Discord server member and “actively engage in challenges, discussions, and community activities.”

And only 10 cards

No thanks.
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That filters out bots and hopefully scalpers, the people in the group as active people will, hopefully, appreciate the win and keep the cards, use them and not sell onwards.

A Stoner said:
It is not like they are making more money by failing to meet demand, and it is not like they do not understand what the demand is going to be.

They are restrained by many aspects and those aspects are hard to change. The amount of access to process nodes, how many chips make the cut and so forth
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Nvidia don’t need excuses, they could hold off on the launch till there is supply. Releasing a handful of 5090s and then saying ‘tough luck, wait for 3 to 4 months till the real release’ is cynical at best. Releasing a handful of cards, as you say, doesn’t make them any more money.
All it does is put a place holder on the market.. wait till April gamers… no need to buy from our competitors.. this is what you can get. Nothing more than a paper launch.
A Stoner said:
The same thing happens in disasters, where the government prevents price raising. I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.
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People did the same with toilet paper a few years ago…
 
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A Stoner said:
where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.
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A company will likely buy direct and in bulk, scalping does not benefit them, or us. Even smaller companies, or single users, are likely to budget more tightly. This is a weird take on how the market works, or even how it benefits us. I think there's enough evidence to the contrary, especially given the market from the 10X0 to now. Also this sort of trickle down economic policy has been shown to be unrealistic.

A Stoner said:
I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.
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Most gas has a shelf life of about 6 months. While I'm assuming you used it all within that timeframe, it's both irresponsible and a direct cause of the "in line for 3 hours" situations you are "preparing" for. I can't tell people how to live their lives, and it may be a financial decision, but it benefits you and no one else.
 
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What an interesting take on pond scum and defense of the practice. Scalpers and the people who buy from them are deserving of any ridicule they get.

Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.
 
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tell chatgpt i want to buy 50 geforce 5090 by any means necessary.
Copy paste zotac picture into chatgpt.
Ask chatgpt if it understands its assignment ...

Not saying you should do this but the barrier for entry is very low.
 
A Stoner said:
Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.
Click to expand...

A Stoner said:
Someone like me who has reasonable amount of money might buy a new video card just because I can afford it and not use it to its full potential where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.
Click to expand...
First time i've seen a justification for scalping.

Like justifying thieving, "i see you only use your 4x4 pickup truck for groceries. Let me steal it because i can put better use of its capability like off roading when running from cops and hauling loads of gpus that i will steal for folding at home, i have good intentions".

I got a nice chuckle though.
 
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A Stoner said:
Scalping actually causes a much fairer distribution of products than simply selling at an arbitrary retail price does. It does come at the cost of some friction in the market. But at the end of the day, the product ends up in the hands of more people who can put it to its best use.

Someone like me who has reasonable amount of money might buy a new video card just because I can afford it and not use it to its full potential where as someone who can use the cards to create games or something else would pay more for the card and create more wealth for the society as a whole.

The same thing happens in disasters, where the government prevents price raising. I bought every damned drop of gasoline I had storage for. I did not need need it, not immediately, but if it remains cheap, I do not want to be left wanting or being forced to sit in line for 3 hours a second time.

If the price of gasoline had risen to double or triple, I might have thought harder about how much gasoline I truly needed at the moment.
Click to expand...
The cards end up in the hands of those that will pay rather than someone who has a good use for it.
 
flowingbass said:
First time i've seen a justification for scalping.

Like justifying thieving, "i see you only use your 4x4 pickup truck for groceries. Let me steal it because i can put better use of its capability like off roading when running from cops and hauling loads of gpus that i will steal for folding at home, i have good intentions".

I got a nice chuckle though.
Click to expand...

Really - it's the first time you have heard an economic case for a "middle man" in a market ?

How is a "scalper" different than any other distributor of a product ?

Zotac and any other distributor should just auction these off to the highest bidder. I would recommend a uniform-price multi-unit auction as appearing most fair.

Comparing to a thief is way off.
 
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