this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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It seems everyone forgot that not too long ago, you could back order something and the store would call/ship whenever they got it.
Just let me give you my credit card number in exchange for a spot in the waiting list, then the scalpers lose and I get my new launch thing whenever they get around to it. But no, that would be too simple, gotta get the crowd riled up and race for the available units!
I suppose this could be abused like everything else but it wouldn’t be worse than what we have now with fucking scalpers buying up the little stock that trickles in via automated bots.
It’s not about getting your fix sooner for the new shiny, sometimes you really need a new GPU to replace the one you’ve had for 5 years! Why should you settle for the previous generation if the new one just came out and you are willing to pay launch MSRP for that privilege (not 2-3x MSRP for scalpers!!).
The same bots that buy everything in seconds would just fill the first 50K(or whatever) places in the back order queue. They already have to have different accounts, addresses, credit cards, etc. to avoid the per customer limits.
Admittedly that does give whatever company more time to investigate that queue for bot accounts. They could then remove suspicious accounts but that costs time/money and they have virtually no incentive to do it. Not to mention the backlash from false positives.
I am not convinced bots would fill the list with hypothetical purchases, I don’t think scalpers are interested in waiting or having money tied up in backorders.
The point is to eliminate the scalper advantage by ensuring one can buy the product « at some point ». If you need it by Christmas or whatever then you are kind of screwed.
I remember for the SteamDeck OLED, stock was enabled in waves over at least a month, so even though the first batch was sold out in minutes, there was no rush to refresh the store page to try and finish the transaction before it ran out. This is in direct contrast to (say) the PS5 which sold out in minutes then still wasn’t available anywhere over a year after it launched.
I don’t really understand how Valve solved the problem, it should have followed the same pattern of being sold out in minutes then scalpers would be the only option for months, but interestingly that’s not what happened.
Valve is an odd duck because they aren’t a publicly traded company and thus not driven by the ‘line must always go up’ nonsense. They would be a company that absolutely would purge bot accounts from their queue. Steam account that’s only hours/days old? No games in the account? No wishlist either. No browse history of any game ever? Yeah, that’s a bot.