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With the scalper/bot menace going on, PS5 shadow drop preorders are the way to go.

Dust

Dust

C H A O S
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,288
I am from a country where pretty much only PC/PS matters, so I had talk with people wanting to preorder both new 3080 GPU and PS5. Everyone who I know that wanted PS5 was able to preorder it due to fact the it just popped out day early out of the blue. It was chaotic and maybe not even intentional but the element of surprise actually helped.

You know how many people that I know got the new 3080? Zero. Literally no one, because there was an army of automated bots all around the world waiting for that exact hour to start hammering sites down with multiple preorders.

Thinking about it...I am perfectly okay with companies opening preorders for hot items around the given preorder date so that scalpers cannot pinpoint exact day and hour.
 
Kyoufu

Kyoufu

Member
Oct 26, 2017
16,582
Yeah it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, I managed to pre-order right after the event without issue, as did all my friends.
 
STGHMAAV

STGHMAAV

Member
Oct 26, 2017
285
No, the easy solution is limiting one unit per verified account. That and captcha or other anti-bot measures
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
38,511
Ibis Island
Doesn't this seem a bit early considering we haven't seen the XSX and XSX launch yet?
PS5 and the 3080 are pretty different devices, especially in the market they're going to cater to.

Regardless, the whole shadow drop method I don't think is really fair for most. What Sony did via invite was definitely a better solution.
Even as someone who got a PS5 pre-order, i've never been a fan of the "Fuck you, got mine" mentality.
 
ianpm31

ianpm31

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,529
I actually might have to agree. Could you imagine if Sony told all retailers/people a start time of when preorders will begin? Huge lines and madness but then again it was madness a few days ago too so...
 
vivftp

vivftp

Member
Oct 29, 2017
19,763
Yup! Discussed it with friends last night and we were all grateful the way things played out since it gave us a fair chance to secure our pre orders. I can only imagine how much stock would've been scooped up by bots if things had started at a designated time.
 
get2sammyb

get2sammyb

Editor at Push Square
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
3,009
UK
I know some people have had a nightmare, but it was a relatively simple process for me as well. Assuming the item actually gets delivered, I just clicked the link and pre-ordered. Took me less than a minute.

Obviously, if I'd been out at that time, though, I wouldn't have been so lucky. Which I guess is the problem.
 
Puroresu_kid

Puroresu_kid

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
9,465
Yet the people who were waiting for the day Sony said pre orders would start missed out.

I don't see how that is the answer.

The sad reality as we have seen with sneakers is retailers and the actual manufactures of products don't care enough to stop bots.
 
breakfuss

breakfuss

Prophet of Truth
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
1,538
Nah. There has to be a better way. To be fair I don't know what that is but this is a shit show and feels unfair to the majority of loyal customers.
 

Deleted member 51789

User requested account closure
Banned
Jan 9, 2019
3,705
I don't mind the shadow drop. But maybe don't have your official line be 'we'll let you know in good time' beforehand if that's the case.
 
Puroresu_kid

Puroresu_kid

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
9,465
Personally I'm happy to know when the xbox pre orders are starting and I can prepare for that rather than having to be lucky enough to to be online when a shadow drop happens.
 
MTR

MTR

Member
Oct 27, 2017
496
I was lucky to get one and it was very easy to order as nobody had seemed to work it out. Its just frustrating that the messaging from Sony was so different where they said they would announce preorders.

Will be interesting to see how the xbox launch goes.
 
Jade1962

Jade1962

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
4,259
Totally agree I've been saying this. Guarantee a higher percentage of real customers got PS5 preorders than got 3080 preorders and the same bot problem will happen with XSX.

No system is perfect but I think random drops are the least exploitable.
 
Xevross

Xevross

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,048
As chaotic as it was it definitely allowed people who were ready at that time a much better chance of securing one. There's much better solutions out there though, this shouldn't really happen again.
 
Puroresu_kid

Puroresu_kid

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
9,465
I'll add shadow drops don't stop bots going forward. Bots take advantage of any restocks now retailers will get.
 
MarsipanRumpan

MarsipanRumpan

Banned
Apr 11, 2018
2,437
Sweden
Worked well in Sweden too, my brother and four friends all got pre orders. I even got two from different websites (although I pre-ordered one of them last year from a retailer lol)
 
Hwoar

Hwoar

Member
Dec 16, 2017
126
It was not a great experience, but yeh all at a specific time also has it's problems.
 
SlickShoes

SlickShoes

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,770
I don't see how this resolves it, there are currently loads of PS5 chancers, and I missed all of the pre orders in my country because they started them during the night when everyone with a job was sleeping, they were all gone by 7am.
 
BoxScar

BoxScar

Member
Jul 21, 2020
799
I disagree, retailers should have anti-scalpers/bot practises in place.
I saw people on Era and Reddit also saying they ordered multiple PS5s incase one got cancelled - that's also an issue with these type of shadow drops as you're not really sure wtf is going on with some retailers going up and some not.
 

Deleted member 1003

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
10,638
Wario announced that Walmart would be getting some on Friday and it turned out to be right. I just click click click and done. You don't have to freak out if you don't get a preorder the very first week.
 
Karlinel

Karlinel

Prophet of Truth
Banned
Nov 10, 2017
7,826
Mallorca, Spain
So a multinational got a sizable chunk of its production held by a small number of speculators? And what do they do, sell the pre-order, or actually buy all those cards to resell?
 

Deleted member 68874

Account closed at user request
Banned
May 10, 2020
10,441
You think it's the way to go because you and the people you know benefited from it?

How about some anti-bot measures instead.
 
Ravelle

Ravelle

Member
Oct 31, 2017
17,805
I managed to get one by pure luck and randomness.

After the event I went to bed, started my day as normal and saw the Pre-Order megathread not knowing the pre-orders were up already, went to my go-to local online retailer to see if they had them yet and made the most of impulse buys ever, managed to pre-order one and the moment I refreshed they were out.

Talk about lucky.
 
nelsonroyale

nelsonroyale

Member
Oct 28, 2017
12,128
that is an interesting point. My experience was that it was fairly straight forward. I stayed up and ordered one from Game, but I had options to order from Smyth, and also a number I signed up for before hand: Simplygames, Games Collection and Shopto. I reckon I could have secured one from all of these. Maybe I was just lucky or I was pretty dogged. Regardless, I think retailers could have deal with it better by registering interest and alloting on that basis. Simplygames and Shopto seem to have done that and it makes sense.

i reckon given the high demands for these things, it is going to be a scramble for the XSX, etc as well.
 
2Blackcats

2Blackcats

Member
Oct 26, 2017
16,079
Jawmuncher said:
Doesn't this seem a bit early considering we haven't seen the XSX and XSX launch yet?
PS5 and the 3080 are pretty different devices, especially in the market they're going to cater to.

Regardless, the whole shadow drop method I don't think is really fair for most. What Sony did via invite was definitely a better solution.
Even as someone who got a PS5 pre-order, i've never been a fan of the "Fuck you, got mine" mentality.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I see what you're saying but this still worked out better even if it was by accident as opposed to design.

A significant amount haven't been hovered up by the scalpers. It's actually gamers that have ended up with all the extra stock through ordering extra to be safe.

Hopefully they'll extra units at cost(or just cancel them). If they don't though , they'll probably spend any profit on launch games.
 
Neonep

Neonep

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,755
You can tell the difference in here between people that are and are not familiar with online drops for limited/high demand products.
 
Ringten

Ringten

Member
Nov 15, 2017
6,195
Yeh it's a good thing, I have been working so was never on time to order any of them.

But one website I was ready to order from had announced the dated. But as you can guess, the minute it went up the website pretty much stopped working. Reloaded and it was all gone
 
AzerPhire

AzerPhire

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,188
Has nothing to do with shadow drop versus planned and all to do with the amount of stock available and retailers enforcing a limit of one per email or household.

For something like PS5 stock levels are going to be huge especially with compared to the probably 1000 cards that were available worldwide for the 3080 launch. As well the PS5 is sold at large retailers like Wal Mart, Best Buy and Target and they can mostly handle the traffic where the 3080 was sold at a bunch of smaller PC dealers that don't have the same infrastructure.
 
xoxoclvbs

xoxoclvbs

Member
Aug 1, 2020
173
It's obvious the people that got one think it's a good thing, and the people that didn't get one think it's a bad thing.

But, even with that said - as someone who is didn't try to get one this past week (waiting for GOW2) - I'm on the team "this shadow drop method is disaster." Real dumpster fire level, too.

The next shadow drop you *miss* is going to change your tune in an instant.
 
cowbanana

cowbanana

Member
Feb 2, 2018
13,718
a Socialist Utopia
Aren't scalpers enabled precisely by the rampant pre-order culture on show here? It's one of these shitty situations people actually create for themselves? I'm not defending scalpers, I think it is a shitty, albeit inherently human, behaviour. Consumerism is truly wild to behold sometimes.
 
Shairi

Shairi

Member
Aug 27, 2018
8,577
It think they way it was, was a mess, but a good one for me. I could pre-oder 2 consoles for me and my brother without any issues. I remember how we struggled to even pre-order one PS4 back in the day.

The sites crashed and all PS4s were gone within seconds. So yeah, overall that was way better this time around.
 
Astandahl

Astandahl

Member
Oct 28, 2017
9,011
When the demand is much higher than the supply available there is no " perfect way ". Of course retailers should always allow 1 unit per customer in order to at least slow down scalpers.
 
Nameless

Nameless

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,363
Totally agree, made this point the other day. Things would have been 10x worse. More bots/scalpers, more legitimate customers, more people just there for the FOMO. Site dies completely. Site comes back up. Stock is gone.

I drove to Gamestop around 7pm, about an hour before corporate "officially" opened pre-orders, and they were out of stock. Called the next closest about 5 mins away, same. Setting a date & time with this level of demand and hype turns it into an event. There would've long lines and crowds(during a pandemic btw) all over.
 
Omeganex9999

Omeganex9999

Member
Oct 25, 2017
765
London
I honestly think it's unfair to say "I got one, so it works" but the majority of my friends was able to preorder one. When I was in Japan, where pre-orders are generally announced days in advance, it was almost impossible to buy something. Basically the RTX 3080 experience we all had the other day.

Those websites need to have bot protection regardless, but platforms like ebay and amazon need to do more to stop scalpers as well.
 
Grimmjow

Grimmjow

One Winged Slayer
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,543
We gotta see how the xbox preorder will go but the chaos worked in my favor.

If there was a set time/date I probably would've missed it due to work.
 
Last edited:
bbq of doom

bbq of doom

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,606
Jawmuncher said:
Doesn't this seem a bit early considering we haven't seen the XSX and XSX launch yet?
PS5 and the 3080 are pretty different devices, especially in the market they're going to cater to.

Regardless, the whole shadow drop method I don't think is really fair for most. What Sony did via invite was definitely a better solution.
Even as someone who got a PS5 pre-order, i've never been a fan of the "Fuck you, got mine" mentality.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Unless there's no demand and a bunch of online retailers suddenly develop and implement a variety of different anti-bot protections, the XB preorders should be fairly rough because you're fitting a sea of people through a pinhole.
 
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