Support NeoGAF

[Agnostic2020]

So last big drop on November 25th , Walmart blocked more than 20 million bot attempts to buy ps5 in 30 minutes till it was sold out. After that they also went though all the sold ones and canceled all the bots that got through their systems.



Good news is soon you can hopefully get your hands on one since they want to continue and track down hard on bots.

Doing Our Part to Ensure Customers, Not ‘Grinch Bots,’ Can Buy This Season’s Hottest Items

The holidays are upon us, and customers are shopping online more than ever before. Our merchandising, operations and tech teams are all focused on giving customers every opportunity to get the hottest gifts they want this season, including the latest…

corporate.walmart.com

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Best to assume this will have to be done for any hot item facing supply constraints from now on. Good on Walmart, they really stepped up their game vs. Amazon over the last few years.

 

[Larlight]

Woah Walmart actually has a message talking to the public? They always seemed like a faceless and voiceless corporation that was always just... there.

 

[//DEVIL//]

Walmart is actually one of the best companies to deal with this. I am really impressed with their services as of late

 

[baphomet]

Good bots can't be separated from regular orders.

They're full of shit.

 

[Memorabilia]

Does this officially settle the debate of how big the scalper/bot problem has become?

I still see a fair percentage of people arguing that Bots aren't a big portion of the perceived supply/demand problem.

It seems to me the evidence is growing that this is an unprecedented situation in which gamers are indeed being out-competed by Bots to some significant degree and that while demand for new consoles would be high and exacerbated by the pandemic (with more people staying in looking to upgrade consoles and GPUs), when we factor in Bots its just a crazy situation in which the ability to secure any given product right now is made several times harder than it should be.

 

[Yui's Empire]

20 million? Goddamn.

Hopefully this won't turn into forcing every customer to provide and verify their IDs and residence in the future, that would effectively put a giant blockade to buying stuff from abroad.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Considering how scarce console supply is to begin with (until supply/demand level out later on), how about just have consoles sold in stores.

For any online only people, too bad. Store purchase only at the beginning. Every store has retail store only products, sales, some BF deals only in store etc..... So it's not the first time retail store only purchases have been done.

And there's so many Walmarts, Targets and EB Games in the US and Canada (well, not Target lol), most people live close enough to one of them.

 

[Rentahamster]

 

[BluRayHiDef]

Considering how scarce console supply is to begin with (until supply/demand level out later on), how about just have consoles sold in stores.

For any online only people, too bad. Store purchase only at the beginning. Every store has retail store only products, sales, some BF deals only in store etc..... So it's not the first time retail store only purchases have been done.

And there's so many Walmarts, Targets and EB Games in the US and Canada (well, not Target lol), most people live close enough to one of them.

Businesses don't want to sell consoles in stores because of incidents like the following.

 

[point decay]

this is crazy, but what is a feasible alternative?

 

[Shivvy24]

this is crazy, but what is a feasible alternative?

Hmm I'm no genius but maybe taking out the option of purchasing as a guest so there's an account linked with the store when purchasing, and one per customer with one per home address thing.

 

[Vick]

Considering how scarce console supply is to begin with (until supply/demand level out later on), how about just have consoles sold in stores.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

The PS5 is so popular even Skynet wants to play it. Damn!

 

[Cob32]

The reaction from the the staff in red lol. Like they were expecting an orderly queue.

 

[Impotaku]

Good bots can't be separated from regular orders.

They're full of shit.

hmm sounds like something a bot would say.....

Waaaait a minute!

Baphomet
B???O??T
BOT

nice try lol, we're onto you.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

See Bitmap Frogs ? No need for the gov't to step in.

 

[DonF]

Fuck scalpers. Fucking parasites. But also to blame, dumb people who buy from scalpers.

 

[demigod]

BS, I was on walmart.com that day and it did not last 30seconds.

 

[Ceadeus]

How hard would it be to use captcha and limit the pruchase to one item per account?

 

[Kenpachii]

Just stop selling them online.

Gotta go to the shop with a ID and problem solved.

 

[mejin]

Lack of good competition results in this shit.

I wished people wanted series X and S too.

 

[NullZ3r0]

So that explains the website behavior and why I was able to get a Series X.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

See Bitmap Frogs ? No need for the gov't to step in.

Yeah, no. Walmart can’t know the ones they didn’t stopped because theyaren’t even aware they are bots.

This is like when cops brag about a drug bust and dope keeps flowing in.

What you want to see is the effect it has on secondary markets. Right now on eBay if you search for ps5 and filter for items over 500$ there’s 10,000 auctions. Granted who knows how many are genuine but prerelease that same search yielded only 2,000 results.

 

[NullZ3r0]

Lack of good competition results in this shit.

I wished people wanted series X and S too.

Both are sold out at Walmart too, troll.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Yeah, no. Walmart can’t know the ones they didn’t stopped because theyaren’t even aware they are bots.

This is like when cops brag about a drug bust and dope keeps flowing in.

What you want to see is the effect it has on secondary markets. Right now on eBay if you search for ps5 and filter for items over 500$ there’s 10,000 auctions. Granted who knows how many are genuine but prerelease that same search yielded only 2,000 results.

Maybe if they could open up their stores and sell them the good ol' fashioned way it wouldn't be such an issue, but I guess we gotta get the gov't to fix problems caused by the gov't.

Here is an example of retailers spending money / giving attention to the scalper issue (which they should) and the best you can do is handwave it.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

Maybe if they could open up their stores and sell them the good ol' fashioned way it wouldn't be such an issue, but I guess we gotta get the gov't to fix problems caused by the gov't.

Here is an example of retailers spending money / giving attention to the scalper issue (which they should) and the best you can do is handwave it.

Even if they could, online is here to stay and some chains use their stores as fulfillment centers so those ps5 units would be removed from shelves anyway.

Effort is only valuable if it yields results.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Even if they could, online is here to stay and some chains use their stores as fulfillment centers so those ps5 units would be removed from shelves anyway.

Effort is only valuable if it yields results.

The results are in the title of the thread you're posting in.

So, unless you're gonna demand flawless results immediately, it appears a major retailer is addressing your concern of "responsibility" without needing the gov't to hold their hand. Onwards and upwards.

 

[nush]

Good bots can't be separated from regular orders.

They're full of shit.

If it was me looking at the data I'd cancel any order that did not include and add on sales of controllers or games. I'd be pretty confident that people with bots just scoop up solo consoles. Few false positives maybe, but as a company I'd make more money.

 

[mejin]

Both are sold out at Walmart too, troll.

chill, man. scalpers are a real problem for PS5, not xbox.

 

[MatrixReloaded101]

Considering how scarce console supply is to begin with (until supply/demand level out later on), how about just have consoles sold in stores.

For any online only people, too bad. Store purchase only at the beginning. Every store has retail store only products, sales, some BF deals only in store etc..... So it's not the first time retail store only purchases have been done.

And there's so many Walmarts, Targets and EB Games in the US and Canada (well, not Target lol), most people live close enough to one of them.

Even if they sold it in stores that would draw massive crowds and line ups which is what these stores want to avoid during covid.

Walmart is doing a great job here but these consoles will still be hard to come by until like April of next year.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Lack of good competition results in this shit.

I wished people wanted series X and S too.

The Series S and X aren’t exactly piling up and easy to find in stores and online either to my knowledge.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

The results are in the title of the thread you're posting in.

So, unless you're gonna demand flawless results immediately, it appears a major retailer is addressing your concern of "responsibility" without needing the gov't to hold their hand. Onwards and upwards.

I just explained you the situation at eBay which you conveniently are ignoring.

The corporation could be saving hundreds of thousands on IT costs (that they pass on to consumers) and the problem solved by the government but oh no, the power grab.

 

[danielJackson]

If it was me looking at the data I'd cancel any order that did not include and add on sales of controllers or games. I'd be pretty confident that people with bots just scoop up solo consoles. Few false positives maybe, but as a company I'd make more money.

Really bad logic. Most people I know order just the console.

Adding other shit to thr basket takes time, could be buggy or even if added first, many dont buy anything but the console.

I have never bought anything with it, as stuff I want is usually cheaper on different store.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

I just explained you the situation at eBay which you conveniently are ignoring.

The corporation could be saving hundreds of thousands on IT costs (that they pass on to consumers) and the problem solved by the government but oh no, the power grab.

Won't something think of the corporations?! Pls save us government!!

 

[nush]

Really bad logic. Most people I know order just the console.

Adding other shit to thr basket takes time, could be buggy or even if added first, many dont buy anything but the console.

I have never bought anything with it, as stuff I want is usually cheaper on different store.

Bad logic my post addressed? "Few false positives maybe, but as a company I'd make more money. "

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

I’m not sure I necessarily believe this. When I was online trying to purchase the PS5, all I got was it’s out of stock whenever I tried add it to the cart. At least with the catastrophic Best Buy drop, I got to the cart screen eventually.

 

[KungFucius]

Does this officially settle the debate of how big the scalper/bot problem has become?

I still see a fair percentage of people arguing that Bots aren't a big portion of the perceived supply/demand problem.

It seems to me the evidence is growing that this is an unprecedented situation in which gamers are indeed being out-competed by Bots to some significant degree and that while demand for new consoles would be high and exacerbated by the pandemic (with more people staying in looking to upgrade consoles and GPUs), when we factor in Bots its just a crazy situation in which the ability to secure any given product right now is made several times harder than it should be.

This doesn't prove anything. It might actually prove bots are not a problem because most are being blocked. I looked at PS5 inventory on ebay last week ish. There were roughly 10k listings, some of which were fake, and 100k completed listings, many of which did not sell or were shill bid up and not paid for. But at worst that meant 100k units being scalped on ebay which should account for most.

While there have been no numbers on PS5 sales, it was stated that they are better than PS4. PS4 supposedly sold 1 million units in launch week in the US. The PS5 has been out for a month. I think we can assume they sold through 1 million units.

So ebay is less than 10% of total PS5 inventory. Craigslist, Amazon, Facebook other sites all have some scalped inventory so ebay numbers alone are not good enough, but my point is, if scalping bots is such a problem, why is ebay inventory so low? The units are not all selling out either. Many are BuyItNow priced higher than auctions.

It really looks like the big issue here is supply not meeting demand, not scalpers making a quick buck off of a minority fraction of the inventory. Do you have numbers that tell a different story?

Best Buy was selling units this week. They had everyone in their home store's region competing for 1 or 2 units for what appeared to be 2 or 3 opportunities. Best buy has a little less than 1000 stores. They were trying to sell what looked to be something like 5,000 systems. I live between Annapolis and Baltimore so I think the numbers I saw are a good average but for the sake of argument it could be more or less units. 5k is less than all the inventory on ebay and their site couldn't handle the traffic. Bots can't really help in that system but could account for some of the slowing down.

The market for a new PS5 in the US is enormous. Scalpers are taking some of the inventory and flipping it, but from what I can tell, that amount is safely less than 20%, probably less than 10%. The scalpers are buying them all narrative is driven by anecdotes and the desire to scapegoat someone.

 

[nush]

This doesn't prove anything. It might actually prove bots are not a problem because most are being blocked. I looked at PS5 inventory on ebay last week ish. There were roughly 10k listings, some of which were fake, and 100k completed listings, many of which did not sell or were shill bid up and not paid for. But at worst that meant 100k units being scalped on ebay which should account for most.

While there have been no numbers on PS5 sales, it was stated that they are better than PS4. PS4 supposedly sold 1 million units in launch week in the US. The PS5 has been out for a month. I think we can assume they sold through 1 million units.

So ebay is less than 10% of total PS5 inventory. Craigslist, Amazon, Facebook other sites all have some scalped inventory so ebay numbers alone are not good enough, but my point is, if scalping bots is such a problem, why is ebay inventory so low? The units are not all selling out either. Many are BuyItNow priced higher than auctions.

It really looks like the big issue here is supply not meeting demand, not scalpers making a quick buck off of a minority fraction of the inventory. Do you have numbers that tell a different story?

Best Buy was selling units this week. They had everyone in their home store's region competing for 1 or 2 units for what appeared to be 2 or 3 opportunities. Best buy has a little less than 1000 stores. They were trying to sell what looked to be something like 5,000 systems. I live between Annapolis and Baltimore so I think the numbers I saw are a good average but for the sake of argument it could be more or less units. 5k is less than all the inventory on ebay and their site couldn't handle the traffic. Bots can't really help in that system but could account for some of the slowing down.

The market for a new PS5 in the US is enormous. Scalpers are taking some of the inventory and flipping it, but from what I can tell, that amount is safely less than 20%, probably less than 10%. The scalpers are buying them all narrative is driven by anecdotes and the desire to scapegoat someone.

Good points made, but you're only looking at it from a US perspective. Bots and scalpers are a much bigger issue because over each generation people have learned about it that the information is more readily available.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

This doesn't prove anything. It might actually prove bots are not a problem because most are being blocked. I looked at PS5 inventory on ebay last week ish. There were roughly 10k listings, some of which were fake, and 100k completed listings, many of which did not sell or were shill bid up and not paid for. But at worst that meant 100k units being scalped on ebay which should account for most.

While there have been no numbers on PS5 sales, it was stated that they are better than PS4. PS4 supposedly sold 1 million units in launch week in the US. The PS5 has been out for a month. I think we can assume they sold through 1 million units.

So ebay is less than 10% of total PS5 inventory. Craigslist, Amazon, Facebook other sites all have some scalped inventory so ebay numbers alone are not good enough, but my point is, if scalping bots is such a problem, why is ebay inventory so low? The units are not all selling out either. Many are BuyItNow priced higher than auctions.

It really looks like the big issue here is supply not meeting demand, not scalpers making a quick buck off of a minority fraction of the inventory. Do you have numbers that tell a different story?

Best Buy was selling units this week. They had everyone in their home store's region competing for 1 or 2 units for what appeared to be 2 or 3 opportunities. Best buy has a little less than 1000 stores. They were trying to sell what looked to be something like 5,000 systems. I live between Annapolis and Baltimore so I think the numbers I saw are a good average but for the sake of argument it could be more or less units. 5k is less than all the inventory on ebay and their site couldn't handle the traffic. Bots can't really help in that system but could account for some of the slowing down.

The market for a new PS5 in the US is enormous. Scalpers are taking some of the inventory and flipping it, but from what I can tell, that amount is safely less than 20%, probably less than 10%. The scalpers are buying them all narrative is driven by anecdotes and the desire to scapegoat someone.

Well put. The scapegoating is a major part of it. It drives clickbait headlines which is why journos are jumping all over the stories (it's not like they should be playing and reviewing videogames or anything....)

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

It’s basically a double edged sword. Deal with potential in store chaos like that or deal with bots, scalpers, insane prices created by scalpers, websites crashing, millions of people simultaneously hitting refresh online, delivery services stealing consoles, employees buying all the consoles, staying online all day waiting for rumored drops until your eyes burn out, etc. One you might get trampled over and the other is like winning the lottery.

 

[cheststrongwell]

They cancelled both my Series X orders because they though I was a bot.

 

[nush]

They cancelled both my Series X orders because they though I was a bot.

I guess you selected the wrong option on the Captcha.

 

[TLZ]

20 million..!

How many of them are online Indian scammers?

 

[Royal-Slime]

A lot of people are complaining about Walmart but I got my PS5 from them. Literally had to wait and watch the phone notifications for almost a week... PS Direct - nothing, Best Buy - crashed immediately, Amazon - sells out in seconds, Gamestop - bundles with stuff I don't need and can't afford. Meanwhile Walmart had that drop and I got a Digital version without any issues - just launched the website on the time they promised to have a drop and got it. It was supposed to arrive late but they actually shipped it to me earlier. The console still works just fine and I'm not having any issues people are reporting. The only issue I have is sometimes games are stuck on the logo screen, for example Demon's Souls - I hit "Play", the image is full-screen but the game doesn't launch. Restarting the console usually fixes it.

Other than that, I'm having no issues. 30 hours on Demon's Souls, 10 hours on Mortal Kombat 11.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

Right now I can't see an effective method to stop bots unfortunately.

 

[Agnostic2020]

They cancelled both my Series X orders because they though I was a bot.

Well to be fair you were buying xsx . That sounds like a Bot to me

 

[CatLady]

So last big drop on November 25th , Walmart blocked more than 20 million bot attempts to buy ps5 in 30 minutes till it was sold out. After that they also went though all the sold ones and canceled all the bots that got through their systems.



Good news is soon you can hopefully get your hands on one since they want to continue and track down hard on bots.

Doing Our Part to Ensure Customers, Not ‘Grinch Bots,’ Can Buy This Season’s Hottest Items

The holidays are upon us, and customers are shopping online more than ever before. Our merchandising, operations and tech teams are all focused on giving customers every opportunity to get the hottest gifts they want this season, including the latest…

corporate.walmart.com

Excellent news, kudos to Walmart and thank you for posting this.

I used to buy a ton of stuff from Amazon but it has turned into a shit show in past few years and Walmart has really stepped up to take their place with great prices, very reliable free 2-day delivery and excellent customer service.

I buy more from Walmart than Amazon these days. This proactive stance on scalper scum makes me want to continue to buy more from them.

 

[MoreJRPG]

I got mine from Walmart and had no issues. Got it day and date, no delays, frequent emails on the status, couldn't have been happier with the service. Glad to see they're one of the few retailers actually doing something about the rampant bot situation.

 

[Agnostic2020]

BS, I was on walmart.com that day and it did not last 30seconds.

Blocking bots start before the orders go online as many bots refresh the page extremely fast and the system detects them based on refreshing the order page .