WTF ?! Scalpers and the bots they use have been a scourge for all gamers hoping to get their hands on a PS5 / Xbox Series X / new PC hardware this season. But some retailers have managed to fight back against the practice, including Walmart, which claims it blocked tens of millions of bots trying to grab the PlayStation 5.
Jerry Geisler, Walmart Global Tech’s Chief Information Security Officer, writes that one of the preventive measures the company implemented just hours before the PlayStation 5 event on Nov. 25 blocked more than 20 million bot attempts within the first 30 minutes alone.
Geisler also notes that those who went through it were subsequently subjected to audits, with all confirmed orders bots bought by the company. “As a result, the vast majority of our next-gen consoles have been bought by legitimate customers, which is exactly what we want,” the report said.
There is also a recommendation that lawmakers do more to prevent bots from swarming shopping sites. In the UK, 26 politicians have signed a motion that could eventually ban the resale of items bought with automated bots.
To highlight how bad scalping has been this season, Bloomberg notes that the usual ratio between new consoles and games bought for that machine is one-to-one. In Japan, where Sony sold approximately 213,000 PlayStation 5 consoles, the top three titles sold less than 63,000 copies, not including digital downloads. That’s about three consoles for each game, illustrating how many people have bought PS5s for the sole purpose of reselling them.
Despite Walmart’s apparent success, getting your hands on a PS5 remains a near-impossible task, although the company says more next-gen consoles will be coming online soon.
Earlier this month, a scalping company that secured nearly 3,500 PS5 units for its members said it had “no regrets.” We’ve also heard that scalpers have made nearly $ 40 million in profits from the holiday’s best tech products.