Reseller Bot Software Is Making It Impossible To Buy A Playstation 5 Online In Time For The Holidays

The surge of e-commerce comes with numerous new positives: you can shop at home, you don’t have to go outside during a pandemic and items are shipped right to your door. But now, as some Christmas shoppers are finding out, it also comes with some brand new negatives – including bots that have been tasked with buying up every new “hot” Christmas item as soon as it goes on sale online with major retailers. 

Such has been the case with items like the Playstation 5, which has been bought up on sites by bots that “resellers use to snatch up products online and relist them moments later at significant mark-ups on eBay and Amazon Marketplace,” according to Reuters. And with most people shopping from home this year, the total addressable market for online resellers has never been bigger. 

26 year old Benjamin Karmis from Illinois, who has been trying for weeks to buy a Playstation 5, said: “There is no possible way that I could have been more prepared to get one, and I have failed every single time.”

And it’s not just Playstations the bots are looking to buy. They are also targeting Charmin toilet paper and Lysol, the report says. This has prompted retailers to try new tactics with listing their products online. The bots “reload web pages every few milliseconds to gain an edge in adding products to their shopping carts.”

“Given bot scripts are constantly evolving and being re-written, we’ve built, deployed and continuously update our own bot-detection tools that allow us to successfully block the vast majority of bots,” Walmart told Reuters. “Online volume has already been high this year due to COVID, and the release of next-gen consoles is creating traffic volume and patterns that have never been seen before.”

The company said most of its higher traffic for new game consoles has come from bots. It said on November 25 alone, the company blocked more than 20 million bot attempts within the first 30 minutes of putting the Playstation 5 for sale. It has also audited orders post-sale and found that “the vast majority of next-gen consoles Walmart has sold have been sold to legitimate customers.”

Target and GameStop both use a similar type of online bot protection on their respective websites. 

Companies like Nike have long grappled with resellers. Nike has used its SNKRS app to help legitimate customers reserve in-demand shoes in stores. And the company even printed “NOT FOR RESALE” on a pair of Air Jordans that sold in 2018. They now sell for $1,000 a pair on the aftermarket. 

Former Nike employee Jay Somerville said: “It’s a major problem, but at the same time I think retailers are now figuring out ways to combat bots with better firewalls and by getting consumers more engaged with things like in-store raffles.”

People can buy access to bot software online for as little as $10 or $20. Bot software can be sold in its entirety for up to $5,000, the report notes. “There’s significant money in this, and the PS5 is a great example,” said Thomas Platt, head of ecommerce at Netacea, a bot security company.

He said one resale ring has already made $1 million to $1.5 million in the last two weeks of November alone.