Xbox and PS5 Stock Up: How You Can potentially Bypass the Bots and Achieve a Console

Since the beginning of COVID-19, inventory shortages and delivery delays have hampered product launches in all industries. Almost a year after the PS5 and Xbox Series X first launched, gamers are still struggling to get their hands on a new console. In addition to these hardware and logistical bottlenecks, a bevy of bots chasing people to checkout add to the challenge of online shopping. But how do these bots work and what strategies can people use to bypass the bots and possibly score a console in case of bottlenecks?

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Botters vs Human: An Online Shopping Click Race

Using a hypothetical example, Jason Kent, hacker-in-residence at Cequence, described a situation where a retailer will drop 20 consoles as part of an increase. In this case, the “botters,” as he described them, will set their systems to search “over and over again at computer speed” for items that are for sale.

“As soon as they know what the item is, it will be added to the shopping cart and a checkout will be initiated immediately,” said Kent. “These botters work in teams so they have the best chance of going to the checkout and shipping the item. Remember, each bot represents hundreds of ‘people’ trying to buy the same item.”

“Even less supply has increased demand, making reselling through shopping bots a necessity for more and more people who want high-demand items,” said Kent. “This has led to a reaction from retailers to create environments that are ‘anti-bot’, but often these techniques help the botters further.”

As an example, Kent explained that buying queues also benefits the bots as they are fast enough to get out of the queue and complete transactions. “Coupled with the botts’ ability to create hundreds of accounts very quickly, they’re essentially the first 100 people in line,” he said.

Add to cart: How to (try) bypass the bots online

While there is little gamers can do to combat chip shortages and retail bot battalions, are there any tricks or strategies shoppers can use to try to get past the bots and land a console? The short answer: not really, but all hope is not lost.

In general, there may be limited ways to help non-botters hit the machines online, Kent explained. The general strategy is “to be in the right place at the right time”. A classic saying may still sound true in the digital age: If you don’t succeed at first, try again. If a person can’t initially add a console to their shopping cart, they may have to “wait a while and try again,” Kent said.

The botter plan isn’t entirely foolproof, and even this automated approach has inefficiencies and time is of the essence.

“Often times the botts have problems with the till and the inventory could flow back into the pool,” he said. “Both strategies are [the] To the best of our knowledge and belief, retail systems are designed for speed, and so are bots, unfortunately people are just too slow. ”

“If you can add the item to your cart, check out immediately, even if you have other purchases to do,” he said. “If you waste time buying additional items, the bots have already bought all of the available inventory.”

When asked if there are certain times of the day that gamers may have a better chance of buying a console and beating the bots, Kent said “the time of day rarely matters.” In the case of luxury items such as sneakers and consoles, which he described as “hot stock sales”, the stock “all at once” ends up on the dealer’s side and is “exhausted as quickly as possible”.

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Strategy, timing and sheer luck aside, Kent said the “real solution” would be for retailers to implement systems to identify bots during the buying process and then block the transaction. On the subject, Kent said he knows of retailers like Cequence customers who block such bots and explains that “few companies” block these agents because it is a difficult endeavor and companies “are afraid to block a valid transaction”.

Renee Gittins, executive director of the International Game Developers Association, said some retailers did more than others, even though “not all had the development resources or the motivation to take such action”.

Providing customers with greater opportunities to purchase a console “helps build loyalty and customer relationships,” said Gittins, making them a “worthwhile investment” for companies with “development breadth” or those dealing with frequently scaled items. However, she said it was nearly impossible to make a “bot-safe website,” adding that there are myriad ways that botters can bypass preventative measures.

Responding to the questions and TechRepublic’s request for comment, a Target spokesperson said the company is “focused on making it easy for guests to find and get the items they are looking for on Target,” added that Target “has taken many measures to” protect our website from bots and to continuously improve our tools and technologies to track and block popular bots. ”

Although this type of bot behavior “usually” spikes during the holiday season or around the first product release, the glitches associated with chip scarcity, Gittins said, have resulted in at least some persistent high levels of scalping, even several months later Publication of these consoles.

Right now, chip supplies are not expected to normalize anytime soon, and some experts TechRepublic has interviewed believe this shortage will last through 2023, which means these bots will be Christmas shoppers this season and next year could irritate.

Whether it was buying graphics cards, game consoles, or other high-demand items, Gittins recommended that people visit “non-standard retailers”, find stores that “only sell batches of such items in person,” and join online communities that help real players get the consoles ”and other items they need.

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