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News hardware & software 26 March 2021, 12:16

author: Witold Ciemierz

Frustrated Parents Sold a PS5 Drawing to Bots

On the German version of eBay, a couple managed to sell a hand-drawn image of the PlayStation 5. The buyer was probably one of the owners of the hated bots.

IN A NUTSHELL:
  1. A couple from Germany managed to "trick" a shopping bot into buying a PS5 image instead of the console;
  2. The whole thing was supposed to be a revenge on scalpers, accused by many people of driving up the prices of the new hardware.

An unusual situation took place on the German eBay, where parents, annoyed by the lack of opportunity to purchase a console for their child, decided to take revenge on the group, which in their view is the crux of the problem with console shortages. With their own hands drew a PS5 on a piece of paper, and then put their work on the popular auction website.

Frustrated Parents Sold a PS5 Drawing to Bots - picture #1
The auction might just encourage people to fight back against scalpers

In the end, the 'PlayStation 5' found a buyer, who was most likely one of the bots now commonly used to buy up consoles that appear online as quickly as possible, then offer them at a much higher price. Admittedly, this was not too severe a blow for the potential scalper, since the total cost of the image was 10.39 euros (4.73 + 5.66 in shipping costs), but we can assume that it was not about making money here, but rather to draw attention to the growing problem in the industry.

Despite the positive overtone of the action, it should be remembered that in recent weeks there have been more and more attempts to cheat and scam, and one of the ways used by dishonest sellers is offering pictures or illustrations of devices instead of actual products. In times when GPUs or PS5 consoles disappear shortly after appearing on an auction website, many people do not pay enough attention to read the description carefully, thereby increasing the chances that they will be fooled by fraudsters.

Frustrated Parents Sold a PS5 Drawing to Bots - picture #2
Such situations are like kicking a man already down.

It's not just console gamers who are struggling to get their hands on the desired hardware. Also people interested in the latest GeForce RTX 3000 cards will face similar adversities, piling up for months and there's no sign of things changing. The pandemic has severely impacted the supply chains and manufacturing capabilities of chip companies, and bots hunting for bargains certainly aren't helping the situation. In addition, a quite unexpected problem has recently emerged that will also affect the availability of the most coveted products in the tech world, and that is the Suez Canal blockage caused by the Ever Given container ship.

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