PS5 and Nvidia RTX series scalper bots foiled by Newegg Shuffle

Ever since the PS5, Xbox Series X, and the Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs launched last year, they've been practically impossible to get hold of, but one retailer has solved the problem of websites crashing under the strain of customers clamoring for a new RTX 3080, or bots hoovering up stock of the RTX 3060 Ti with a lottery system. 

It's not too dissimilar to the ballot method UK retailer BOX has employed with its Xbox Series X restock, which you can read more about in our Xbox Series X stock tracker; in this case, it's Newegg with its 'Newegg Shuffle' event. 

The first such event was spotted by PCMag and went a week after Newegg's Twitter account announced it has a "long term solution coming out shortly for hot items with little supply." This week, we saw the account tweet that it had the RTX 3080, 3070, 3090, and 3060 Ti available, with customers given a brief three-hour window to access the 'event', and select the products they wanted a chance to purchase.

• iMessage finally comes to Android – but we have some concerns
• Samsung Galaxy Note 20 FE is the cheap Note 21 alternative we've been waiting for
• Xbox Series Z handheld concept blows the Nintendo Switch away

Once the window closes, 'winners' are drawn from the entrants, and they're contacted via email with information on how to complete their purchase. If they don't go ahead, for whatever reason, the opportunity goes to someone else. 

BOX seems to have had some success, after floating the ballot system last month. It's bringing it back the ballot this month, which adds an element of fairness as customers don't have to spend time in a queue, manically refreshing, or frantically trying to get to checkout before the bots.

You can snap up the RTX 30 series cards on their own or in bundles, and while there's no news on a confirmed second Shuffle event, it seems to be the solution the retailer was hinting at, so we'll be keeping an eye on it.  

You can keep up to speed with RTX 3080 restocks using T3's Nvidia RTX 3080 stock tracker. If you'd prefer to find out which retailers are getting the PS5 back in stock, we've got you covered with a PS5 stock tracker too. 

In the meantime, you can check out our top picks for best graphics cards. 

Source: PCMag