Those situated in the UK seem to have faced another setback in their quest to get a PlayStation 5 after scalpers have claimed to be snagging thousands of consoles.
To the delight of many gamers, GAME.co.uk restocked the next-gen console earlier today but it seems that the scalpers may have got in there before other customers.
The Carnage Bot, which is believed to be the account in question, advertises itself with an initial £250 entry fee along with a £25 monthly cost thereafter. From there, you would be given the tools to skip queues online and gain access to a community of scalpers.
GAME has offered more insight into the systems it has in place to prevent scalpers from using bots to snap up new PlayStation 5 stock.
Scalpers are people who buy up the stock of an item then sell it at a higher price. One Twitter account, @CarnageBot, claims to have grabbed “2,000 checkouts” from the GAME drop earlier today.
The account in question, @CarnageBot, now seems to have locked its account due to the backlash.
According to Birmingham Mail, others who were using the bot also bragged about their haul. One of the accounts wrote: “First time running @CarnageBot. 10x PS5s secured”
PS5 consoles regularly sell for £100s more on eBay or Facebook Marketplace. On the high street, CEX still sells PS5 consoles for £815 and continues to operate its in-person trade-in services even while the UK is in lockdown.
A statement released to VGC assured that the UK retailer is only selling one PS5 unit per customer and has checks and processes to ensure no one is purchasing multiple consoles.
Statement Given by VGC in response to these Scalpers
“PlayStation 5 continues to be in very high demand and that demand far outweighs current supply,” the spokesperson said. “We have strong measures in place to help ensure that our ‘one per customer’ statement is maintained to allow for as many individual customers to successfully purchase as possible.”
All pre-orders are subject to automatic checks, and order updates — such as cancellations following these checks — take place after a customer will have received a valid order confirmation email.
At present, these orders are still pre-orders and as such, no payments have yet been taken from customers. Payments will commence once our order checks have been completed.
Generally, bots are used to target footwear and rare merchandise and they have now entered the console market and are being used to grab PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles.
Bots like Carnage are used to quickly add items to the shopping cart and checkout – far quicker than any normal person can. It is unclear if GAME implemented any measures to stop the bots from buying tons of stock.
Back on Twitter, some of those who bought extra PS5 stock today attempted to explain why they had done it.
“I lost my full-time job due to the pandemic, I have bills to pay, to do that I am selling a PS5,” one user wrote. “I have bills to pay and this is how I can currently pay them in the pandemic, if people are fortunate enough to be able to afford a PS5 they are not in the position I am.”
