Yesterday, scalper group Carnage claimed they’d been able to successfully purchase over 2,000 PS5 consoles from a PS5 restock at GAME. In a statement to Eurogamer, the retailer denies this will be the case, saying they have “strong measures in place” to stop the group from receiving all of those consoles.
The scalper group had claimed they’d been able to complete checkout on more than 2,000 consoles and that it “just keeps getting easier every time.” Members of the group took to Twitter to share screenshots of their e-mail inboxes with confirmations for multiple console purchases. However, GAME states that those screenshots merely show console pre-orders; they’re e-mail confirmations but payments have not yet been taken. The statement reads:
PS5 continues to be in very high demand and that demand far outweighs current supply. We have strong measures in place to help ensure that our ‘1 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 the present time 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.
Whether GAME manages to prevent all of the multiple purchases from being successful remains to be seen, although scalper groups have become unstuck before. Retailer Very previously canceled the purchases of 1,000 Xbox Series X consoles by rival scalper group CrepChiefNotify, blaming “a technical error.”
There’s also a likelihood the groups claims are exaggerated anyway in an effort to drum up business for their bot service, which requires membership fees to use. Despite this, the backlash against Carnage’s actions has been severe enough for the group to make the Twitter account private and public resentment of these groups continues to grow. Even UK politicians are trying to make scalping an illegal activity. The problem is that until people refuse to buy consoles at inflated prices on third-party marketplaces, others will continue to take advantage of this.
[Source: Eurogamer]