Many reports are coming out regarding how consumers cannot order the new generations of consoles due to scalping bots.

The long awaited machines have been released for a couple of weeks now, but they seemingly sell out on the websites of online retailers in as little as less than a minute. This extremely miniscule period to buy a console is not accidental. Certain tech-savvy individuals have set up bots to automatically purchase these machines as soon as they become available. They then sell the consoles on online selling sites like eBay for a noticeably higher price in order to turn a profit. One of these groups of individuals who all go under the alias CrepChiefNotify, boast about claiming many of these consoles. One of their Facebook posts states the following: “We offer a simple risk-free money-making service. ⁠We are taking advantage of the supply and demand issue here…”

This is not the first line of products where the availability is practically non-existent. This has happened before on Nvidia’s 3000 series of consumer graphics cards. For their flagship RTX 3070 and 3080 models, it would only take around a couple of minutes before the restock would be entirely emptied, leaving the average consumer empty-handed. Popular YouTuber “SomeOrdinaryGamers,” who boasts 2.2 million subscribers on YouTube, joked on Twitter about the shortage: “Shocker, the 7 RTX 3070’s on the market were sold out before they went live, what a joke.”

SomeOrdinaryGamers isn’t the only vocal negative voice about the situation. Not only have people voiced their criticism at the lack of handling of these scalping groups online, but also at the fronts of these retail stores. I’m sure that many parents are left frustrated at that they are unable to order a shiny new PS5 for their child to unwrap during the holidays. Microsoft and Sony have yet to announce a solution to the scalping problem, which has left consumers even more flustered. One consumer leaves their complaints on Microsoft’s forums. “Imho you have empowered scalpers to follow this practice and are largely responsible for this disgusting behaviour. Utterly disgusted so far from the lack of communication.”

With each passing day where these dedicated scalping groups reign supreme comes increased tensions between consumers and the producers. If these big gaming corporations fail to rein them in, many children will wake up on Christmas day to be shocked at the lack of a new gaming system.