Bots and scalpers make PS5 and Xbox Series X stock hunting a nightmare

Last night was a familiar story. Walmart announced that it would have a new supply of PS5s at some point, and with a few minutes, rather seconds, it was completely sold out. A lot of people couldn’t even load the site, access their cart, or checkout without something going wrong along the way or the PS5s running out by the time they thought they’d reached the end.

Although some people have managed to get their hands on a PS5, there is still a lot more demand for the system than supply, and given that almost all retail sales are taking place online due to the pandemic, this is an issue that is magnified because shopping bots are used to snip systems for consumers or scalpers almost as soon as they go live.

The BBC has a rather fascinating look at trading robots as a result of all of this, which they say has the biggest market in the sneaker industry, where new releases and instant sales of valuable shoes are common. Some “snipe” bots may just alert you when inventory is increasing at a site, but more advanced bots can automatically guide you through the checkout process.

The BBC spoke to a former GameStop director who explained how widespread this issue is:

“Sometimes over 60% of our traffic – out of hundreds of millions of visitors per day – was made up of bots or scrapers. Especially as big launches approach.”

But the problem for retailers? There’s not a ton of motivation to fix the problem given that consoles are being sold anyway, so who cares? And people can’t to prove bots have a console and they didn’t necessarily have it, and as it happens at almost every retailer, people are angry with them as well. This is why you may not see retailers bending over backwards to try and stop this practice as much as they can.

Bots are a real problem, and it’s easy to see spikes in search volume for bot terms as a result of these console launches and big drops in new inventory:

So if you’re having trouble landing on a PS5 or Xbox Series X, blaming the bots isn’t as hard as you might imagine. They’re real, they’re legion, and they’ve got consoles before you. Sometimes for real desperate customers who are fighting fire to get a unit for themselves, but often for dealers looking to make a profit, which is why 3,500 PS5s can land in the lap of a single group of scalpers.

The PS5 and Xbox shortages will continue well into the next year until supply increases enough to meet demand. But the bot threat will remain for the entire time, and unless further action is taken by retailers, it will remain frustrating for a significant portion of potential buyers.

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